Changelings
by NotesfromaClassroom
Summary: Set during and after the TOS episode "The Changeling," the crew has to pull together to help Uhura recover after she is attacked by Nomad. What they learn as they work to help her regain her memories changes them forever.
1. Square One

**Chapter One: Square One  
**

**Disclaimer: I do not profit from writing about these characters. **

From the corner of her eye, Uhura sees Sulu half-rise from his seat at the helm, his hand fluttering like a frightened bird.

_Nomad, hovering a few feet in front of her._

She stops singing.

"What is the meaning?"

The probe's computerized voice is flat, inflectionless. _Remorseless._ Uhura feels the hair on the back of her neck rise.

"What?"

"What form of communication?"

"I don't know what it—"

Glancing at Sulu, she has a leap of insight. Something had drawn the probe to the bridge.

"Oh, my singing," she says. And then to Nomad, she says, "I was singing."

"For what purpose is singing?"

The question catches her off-guard, partly because a dangerous mechanical device is asking it, but partly because she's never really articulated to herself why she finds so much pleasure in music. The joy of creation, for one. The camaraderie of singing in a chorus, the rush of performing for an appreciative audience—the reasons she had joined the Academy Chorale Ensemble.

_Too complex—or abstract—for a computer?_ She imagines Spock mildly chastising her later for being unable to communicate more effectively with what is essentially an intelligent tool.

_Communications expert, indeed. _

"I don't know. I—I like to sing. I felt like music."

"What is music? Think about music."

A blinding flash. In the distance, someone shouts. Scotty, clearly alarmed. The whoosh of the lift doors opening, and a glimpse of the captain and Spock rushing forward—and then nothing.

X

"I don't know, Jim," Dr. McCoy says, his voice characteristically sour, the way it is when he is distraught. _Or angry._ Spock is rarely certain which emotion to attribute to the doctor. Both, in fact, may be right.

The captain, on the other hand, is easier to read. Right now he is worried. And angry.

And rightly so. Since Nomad's attack on Lieutenant Uhura, she has been unresponsive—mute, her gaze cast in the distance, though Dr. McCoy has found no reason for it.

'What do you mean, you don't know?" the captain says, not bothering to hide his annoyance.

Both he and Spock are standing in the doctor's small office in sickbay, McCoy sitting at his desk.

"Well, the tests indicate no brain damage," he says, tapping through several screens on his computer. "As near as I can tell, she's suffered some kind of electrical shock, though why she is still unable to respond, I don't know. It doesn't make sense."

"What was it Nomad said?" Kirk says, looking first at McCoy and then to Spock.

"That her _knowledge banks_ have been erased," Spock says promptly. "A phrase that suggests that as far as Nomad is concerned, biological and mechanical life forms are similar."

"Life forms!" McCoy scoffs. "Are you telling me that that tin-plated flying box is _alive_?"

Spock sees the captain shift slightly, as if preparing to head off the doctor's usual tirade.

"Whether or not it is alive is immaterial," Spock says with more equanimity than he feels. "It acts as if it is. It is curious, defends itself, has a sense of purpose—"

"Spock! It may be responsible for the deaths of whole worlds! We know it tried to kill Scotty. It may have damaged Uhura beyond anyone's ability to repair. Don't tell me I have to treat it as if it is a living creature!"

"Bones," the captain says, waving his hand toward him.

"Doctor," Spock adds, "I am not making a moral judgment about Nomad. But if Nomad believes that it is alive, it would be dangerous not to treat it as if it is."

At his side, he senses the captain react.

"Spock," Kirk says, "you said you think Nomad has confused me with its creator."

"Jackson Roykirk."

"What's going to happen when it discovers its error?"

Spock takes a breath before answering. _What, indeed?_ As he often does, Captain Kirk has made an intuitive jump right to where Spock has been leaning.

"Unknown," he says. "But other sentient creatures often react badly when their creators are not who they imagine them to be."

"If we can set aside the theology for a moment," McCoy says, "I have a bigger issue at hand. You said you thought Uhura could be re-educated, Spock. But so far nothing's been able to break through that daze she's in. It's almost like she's in a waking coma. The lights are on but nobody's home. I'm not sure there's anything anyone can do."

The doctor's tone still reflects his anger and distress. His words are not what humans would call _flip_ or callous. He is not making a joke. But Spock is surprised at how irritated he feels at the doctor's assessment.

At how McCoy seems to be writing Uhura off.

For the past two years Spock has worked side by side with the lieutenant, their work stations on the bridge of necessity overlapping. More than any other bridge crew member, Uhura knows how to anticipate his requests, can follow without prompting where his logic will take him, is able to work for extended periods of time with little loss of efficiency. Replacing her will be difficult, if not impossible.

He recalls how she had impressed him with her work ethic and gifted ear in his advanced phonology seminar at the Academy, the only time she had taken one of his courses. Even as a cadet she showed unusual persistence in figuring things out, in challenging herself to learn more than anyone else in the class. If he hadn't hired Leila Kalomi the semester before to be his student aide, he would have offered the position to Cadet Uhura.

As he always does when he thinks about Leila, Spock feels a wave of uneasiness. A lucky thing she had joined the colonists heading for Omicron Ceti III after graduation.

And perhaps a lucky thing Cadet Uhura wasn't available after all.

He'd been in an interesting state that year. When Christopher Pike left the _Enterprise_ to become fleet captain, Spock left as well, turning down the certain promotion and choosing instead a teaching position at the Academy. Even now he isn't entirely sure why.

One of his reasons was the uncertainty he felt with T'Pring. Recent baffling messages had made him question their future—and with good reason, as it turned out. Each night before he retires he still needs extra meditation time to deal with his lingering anger about her betrayal with Stonn.

But another reason had to do with his sense of himself on the _Enterprise_. As Captain Pike's science officer, he was content to pursue his natural interests in the course of a career. Long ago he had reconciled any qualms he might have felt about being part of the military, despite Vulcan's official pacifist status.

When Pike left, Spock had trouble imagining working that closely with another captain again, and indeed, if Captain Pike hadn't asked him personally to consider rejoining the crew under the command of James Kirk, Spock would have stayed at the Academy.

Not happily, perhaps, but reasonably content.

"He needs someone to watch his back," Pike had said, "the way I always knew you had mine. At least think about it. I've known this guy for quite awhile. He's got talent, Spock. And I think you'd make a hell of a team."

Like so many things that Captain Pike had said to him over the years, this proved prophetic. And true.

He looks at the captain now.

"Human memory," Spock says, "is not like a computer's. It resides in the synaptic connections between individual brain cells. As far as we know, it is highly redundant and nonlinear. What Nomad did may have made accessing those memories difficult, but I believe they are still there."

"And we're still no closer to helping her," McCoy says, throwing his hands up in the air.

"A mind meld," the captain says, and Spock nods.

"I may be able to help the lieutenant retrieve her memories," Spock says.

McCoy makes a noise halfway between a snort and a harrumph.

"And if you can't?"

"I may at least be able to help her retrieve some language skills. Then she could be re-educated."

"Either way, Jim," McCoy said, standing up and moving toward the door, "this is going to take lots of time. We might want to think about transferring her to the medical facilities on Starbase 11."

This, too, makes Spock feel an unexpected spike of irritation with the doctor. If the mind meld is successful, the lieutenant could be back on duty almost immediately.

Before he can respond, the captain says, "Not yet, Bones. Let's give this a chance first."

McCoy leads the way out of his office to the wardroom where Uhura lies on a biobed, her eyes open and staring. Christine Chapel hovers nearby, her concern etched on her face in a way that even Spock recognizes.

"When can we start?" the captain says, and McCoy shrugs.

"If you're going to do it, you might as well go ahead. I can't do anything else for her."

"Spock?"

The conditions are not ideal. The room is far too chilly for his comfort—as most areas of the ship are—and the room is too bright. Privacy would be preferable.

Repressing a sigh, Spock steps to the biobed and looks closely at the lieutenant. Her vacant look is so unlike her that he is disconcerted. Lifting his hand in front of her face experimentally, he waits to see if she reacts.

_Nothing._

He lets his fingers drift to the side of her face. Her skin is dry and cool, almost unnaturally so.

_My mind to your mind,_ he intones silently, lowering his shields and casting out into the void. _Where are you?_ he calls.

Of their own accord, his eyes close. His breathing slows, slows, and he feels himself sinking, like someone trying to walk across a bog.

_Uhura,_ he says. _Where are you?_

Silence and darkness, and for a moment Spock considers whether or not Dr. McCoy was right, that this is a useless effort. Perhaps, despite what the initial tests show, Lt. Uhura has suffered some sort of damage beyond repair. Or a loss of memory so pervasive that she is no longer reachable.

The idea catches him up short, makes him unaccountably sad.

_Uhura!_ he calls, this time with more urgency.

And then he hears it, like a distant wind—a soft susurration that starts out low and grows in intensity. Humming, or singing, wordless and yearning.

He moves forward in this landscape of her mind and the darkness begins to lift and the noise surrounds him.

With a start, he realizes that the lieutenant is standing beside his elbow, her face tipped up toward him.

"I knew you'd come," she says. "Please hurry!"

He reaches out his hand to take her by the wrist but his fingers close around empty air. With a lurch, he's back in sickbay, the floor rushing up to meet his head as the world goes black.

**A/N: I'm new here in this fandom, though not a new fan of TOS. I watched the original episodes when they aired in the 1960's and have loved these characters ever since.**

**When the reboot movie was announced, I was skeptical. After all, I loved the trinity of Kirk, McCoy, and Spock. And I loved the original actors. How could anyone replace them?**

**So I was relieved that the writers of the new movie didn't try to. Count me among those viewers who found the movie a terrific adventure and a refreshing take on the characters. **

**I've written 18 stories over in the reboot movieverse, so if you are enjoying this one, you might want to take a look over there.**

**At any rate, I hope you enjoy this venture. Reviews help me know if there's an audience for this story to continue, so whether you liked it or not so far, let me know.**


	2. O Captain! My Captain!

**Chapter Two: O Captain! My Captain!**

**Disclaimer: This is where I play for free.**

"I appreciate your concern, Doctor," Spock says, "but I am unharmed."

Leonard McCoy crosses his arms and shakes his head.

"For the record, Jim," he says, "I don't think we should try this again. I'm recommending that you give me a shuttle and a good pilot and let me divert to Starbase 11. They have a prototype neurostimulator there that sounds promising. I'd like to start her treatment as soon as possible."

Even in the dimmed lights of the sickbay, Jim Kirk can see the mixture of guilt and resolve in McCoy's expression. On one of the biobeds against the wall, Uhura lies, her vital signs flashing on the overhead monitor, her eyes open in an eerie stare. _Typical for the doctor to blame himself—and unnecessary_. Kirk knows that McCoy hasn't left sickbay since Nomad attacked the lieutenant and did whatever it was that has left her like this—mute and unseeing.

He opens his mouth to say something, anything, to reassure the doctor, but Spock speaks first.

"If the lieutenant needs to be moved to Starbase 11, it is more logical that I be the one to take her," he says, his hands parked behind his back. "As chief medical officer, your place is here on the ship. I, on the other hand, could pilot the shuttle myself and assist the technicians with the neurostimulator."

Here it comes, Kirk thinks, and sure enough, the doctor uncrosses his arms and takes a step closer to Spock.

"You might be the science officer of the _Enterprise_, but you have don't have the necessary medical training to even touch the neurostimulator."

"As it is a prototype," Spock says swiftly, "your familiarity with it is equally limited."

"Are you implying that I—"

"Gentlemen," Kirk says, trying to hide the weariness in his voice, "the decision about who takes the lieutenant anywhere is mine. And at any rate, you are being premature. This mind meld may work."

"If you ask me—" McCoy huffs, and Kirk says, "I didn't, Bones." Then softening his tone, he adds, "Look, I know you don't want to turn over her care to just anyone—I know you feel responsible. But give this a chance."

McCoy starts to say something but Kirk shoots him a look and he closes his mouth and recrosses his arms.

"What do you need?" Kirk says to Spock.

"Quiet," Spock says, giving a meaningful glance at McCoy, "and privacy. And Captain," he says, unclasping his hands and letting his arms fall to his side, "I may need your help. The last time I attempted contact with the lieutenant, I was unable to maintain our connection."

At his side Kirk feels McCoy shift impatiently.

"What do you need me to do?" the captain says quickly to head off any comments from the doctor.

"I believe," Spock says, "that the electrical shock Nomad administered to Lt. Uhura has made the synapses in her brain unresponsive to normal stimulation. If we can activate some of her memories, we can start a chain reaction that should spread and reconnect all the neural pathways."

"Like opening a dam," Kirk says, imagining an old-fashioned floodgate he had seen on his uncle's farm. Another image from his childhood in Iowa presents itself. "Or like starting a wildfire."

As he often does when Kirk surprises him with an apt metaphor, Spock raises one eyebrow.

"Precisely," he says.

"But I don't see how I—"

"As the captain," Spock says, moving toward the biobed so that he is standing on one side near the monitor, "you will be prominent in Lieutenant Uhura's thoughts and memories. After all, you are her superior officer, and I believe you knew each other at the Academy."

"So what?" McCoy says testily. "How's that going to help Uhura?"

Ignoring the doctor's outburst, Spock continues speaking to Kirk.

"Without a reference point, I will be unable to find the memories that concern you. However, if you are part of the meld—"

"Now wait a minute," McCoy says, moving a few inches too close into Spock's personal space. Kirk watches as Spock steps away, his hands tucked safely behind his back. "It's bad enough that you are trying this…meld…on Uhura and you. But now you want to include the captain? I don't think so."

Kirk feels Spock's eyes on him and he makes a decision.

"We have to," Kirk says. "And you know it, Bones. Discussion over."

X X

Despite his assurances to the captain and Dr. McCoy, Spock is not certain that the joined meld he is proposing will work. In theory, yes. He has read several accounts of group melds used by healers, such as when one of the participants is too young or sick to join without support—a small child, for example, whose mother might assist the healer in reaching into his mind.

But Spock has never attempted it before. He calculates the odds of failing to sustain a suitable meld at 47.4%.

This time sickbay is dark, the temperature several degrees warmer. McCoy stations Christine Chapel in the outer room to deal with anyone wandering in needing medical attention.

"I'm staying here," he declares, the note of stubbornness unmistakable in his voice. Spock nods briefly and takes a cleansing breath, preparing himself.

On the biobed, Uhura doesn't stir. Spock turns to the captain and lifts his hand.

"My mind to your mind," he says, letting his fingers rest lightly on Captain Kirk's brow and cheek. The captain closes his eyes and Spock does the same.

A dizziness, like being whirled around in a howling storm—and suddenly the landscape of his mind lies before him the way he sees it when he meditates, red and dusty like Vulcan, with distant purple mountains and a setting sun.

"Your home?"

The captain's voice at his elbow.

"Yes," he says. "But we can't stay here."

With an effort he opens his eyes and is back in sickbay, standing beside the biobed. Lowering his hand from the captain's face, he leans forward and slowly brushes his fingers along Lt. Uhura's temple.

The same dizziness forces him to close his eyes. For a moment he feels himself swaying on his feet, and then with a jerk, he is upright in a small, noisy room. Someone presses past him on the left with a "Pardon me!" Turning to look, Spock sees an Academy cadet in red carrying two large glasses of something that smells mildly fermented.

A bar—with acoustic instruments so loud that Spock struggles not to wince. And not just any bar, but the one near the shipyards at Riverside.

He's been here before with Captain Pike on one of the regular barnstorming tours through the Midwest to sign up recruits. Several uniformed cadets mingle with locals in civilian dress—prospective students or shipyard workers, it's difficult to tell.

Spotting Uhura perched primly on a barstool, Spock makes his way across the crowded room until he can overhear the bartender asking for her order.

"I'd like a Klabnian fire tea, three Budwiser classics, two Cardassian sunrises, and, uh—"

"You should try the Slusho Mix," the bartender says, and Uhura thanks him and agrees. Somehow Spock knows that the drinks are for a group of fellow cadets playing poker in a room down the hall—Uhura's memory of them seated around a green felt table coming easily to mind.

Yet Kirk is here, too, wearing casual clothes. _Not a cadet?_ The young woman sitting with him at a small table near the wooden bar is dressed casually as well, though with far less on.

A tall, lanky, sandy-haired cadet unsteady on his feet ambles up to Uhura and nudges her elbow.

"That's a lot of drinks for one woman," he says, a definite leer on his face.

"Don't you have anything else to do, Finnegan?"

"Always so unfriendly," the cadet—Finnegan—says, leaning both elbows on the bar. "Why is that, Uhura? You're the only plebe who won't warm up to me."

From his position at the bar, Spock watches Uhura angle her body away from Finnegan, her contempt obvious. Darting out his hand, Finnegan tugs her arm and swivels her forcefully around. She gives a startled yelp.

"You turned your back on me," he says angrily.

Although Spock knows this is a memory—that his place here is not interactive—is, in fact, a necessary fiction his mind has created so that he can navigate this place—Spock feels his heart racing, his neck flushing with anger.

He starts forward.

Jim Kirk is suddenly there in front of him, his hand like a vise on Finnegan's wrist.

"Hey, buddy," he says loudly, "I don't think she likes that."

"Get your hands off me, townie!"

"Yeah, well, you're just gonna have to make me."

Kirk flashes what Spock has come to recognize as his signature smirk—part genuine amusement, part challenge.

Like a pile driver, Finnegan erupts from his stool and connects his fist with Kirk's jaw. Kirk flies back and topples into one of the small tables on his way to the floor. Glass and drinks crash around him and nearby patrons hustle back.

Another flurry of action—this time as Uhura grabs Finnegan's forearm and uses his forward motion against him, flipping him neatly over. He lands with a thud on the glass-strewn floor.

Stepping over him, she reaches down and clasps Kirk's hand as he gets to his feet.

Rubbing his jaw he says, "Remind me never to make you mad."

"Yeah, well," she says, glancing down at Finnegan still on the floor, "he's had it coming for a long time."

"Where'd you learn to do that?"

"What?"

"That. Flatten a guy with one finger."

"Oh, basic military PT. You know, at Starfleet Academy."

For a moment the lights and sounds of the bar swirl around Spock like a kaleidoscope—and he knows that in this intersection of Kirk's and Uhura's memories, he can sift through their separate thoughts as if they are his own. He senses Uhura's appreciation for Kirk's misplaced gallantry and understands her decision to offer him a drink for his trouble. He senses her surprise that Kirk can carry on a reasonable and fairly well-educated conversation, sees her awareness that Kirk's female companion is increasingly annoyed that he's giving a cadet his attention—chaste though it obviously is.

And Spock is aware of Kirk's growing realization that one more night in the Shipyard Bar is just that—another night when he isn't doing what he really wants to be doing—pursuing a passion rather than drinking away his boredom. The niggling jealousy of the cadets around him—women and men moving with purpose to a goal he desires—Spock feels that as if it is his own.

By the time Uhura finishes her drink she's told him about the recruitment push. By the time Kirk leaves the bar he's decided to show up the next morning at the shuttle transport station to enlist.

The scene shifts—this time to the Academy commons—a large stretch of green lawn crisscrossed with walkways bordered by classroom buildings and dorms on two sides and Kober Street along the third. From the commons students can look out over the water, the Golden Gate Bridge leaping up from the Marin headlands and landing on the other side of San Francisco Bay at Old Fort Point.

The weather is cool and foggy—typical for summer in the bay area. Spock shivers and looks around for Uhura or Kirk, wondering how this memory is connected to the earlier one in the bar.

In the distance he sees Kirk—a cadet now in red—walking with his arm draped around the shoulders of a blonde woman. From the other direction Uhura appears, her arms full of PADDs. As she nears Kirk, his face lights up with recognition and she tries to lift her hand in greeting. Instead, several of her PADDs clatter to the walkway and she laughs—a trill that sounds almost like music. Stooping to help her, Kirk says, "How're the juggling classes coming?"

_A joke._ Uhura laughs again, and this time Kirk joins in.

The joke must not be amusing to the blonde woman. She stands with one hand on her hip, an unreadable expression on her face while Kirk and Uhura speak to each other.

In less than a minute, they are on their separate ways, though Spock notices what neither of them sees—how they look back over their shoulders at different times, missing each other's glance.

The image is unsettling somehow.

Another scene comes more quickly, the details richer and deeper, as if the memories are in sharper relief.

A dimly-lit room—though not completely dark. From the ceiling hangs a lightshow fixture throwing out slivers of different colors across what Spock realizes is a dance floor. The Winter Ball—a tradition at the Academy that has always baffled him. As an instructor, he chaperoned it twice—both times grateful when the evening was finally over.

Here it is as he remembers it, with couples standing closely to each other, some merely talking, others attempting rhythmic motions despite what must be an uncomfortable proximity to other couples attempting the same thing. At once he sees Uhura. Unlike most of the other women, she is wearing a richly embroidered gown that covers her from neck to toe. Dark green, gleaming in the low light of the room, it reminds Spock of the traditional robes worn by Vulcan women.

That, too, is an unsettling image.

Uhura's dance partner is a cadet Spock recognizes as a superior musician, someone who performs informal concerts in the amphitheater at one end of the commons when the weather is warm. That Uhura knows him well is not surprising, given her interest in music and her participation in the Chorale.

As Spock watches, Kirk appears on the dance floor leading the same blonde cadet from the earlier memory by the arm. When he sees Uhura, he lifts his hand and waves. The two couples sidle through the crowd until they are close enough to talk.

"You remember Carol," Kirk says over the noise of the music, and Uhura says, "Of course. How are you?"

"Engaged," Kirk says, his face splitting into a smile.

The images bobble and waver and morph—and now Kirk is sitting on one of the stone steps of the outdoor amphitheater at one end of the commons, ringed with budding trees in springtime, Uhura sitting beside him, both of them with somber expressions.

"I'm sorry," she says, placing her hand on his arm. "I wish I knew what to say."

"You don't need to say anything," Kirk says. "It's enough that you're here."

Sorrow and disappointment, though the intensity of the emotions makes discerning the source difficult.

Another emotion underscores the sadness and Spock focuses on teasing it out.

Friendship—Spock feels it looping between the two of them like a visible woven thread—but something else, too—something unnamed and unnameable—some emotion neither has ever spoken of and never will—won't, in fact, acknowledge it now, here, when it lies bare in front of them.

Instead, Spock feels them both retreating from the memory, feels their presence in his mind growing dim, like candles guttering down to the wicks, growing fainter until they are gone.

Except that someone is calling his name.

_Spock! Spock!_

A cool touch on his head, a sliver of light as he opens his eyes.

Sickbay, the captain and Dr. McCoy eyeing him with concern.

"Spock?" the captain asks, and Spock blinks once, twice.

"I am…unharmed," he says. "Lieutenant Uhura?"

He turns to where Uhura is still prone on the biobed, her eyes open as they were before.

"Uhura, can you hear me?" McCoy says.

Nothing.

The captain bends down so that he is directly in her line of sight.

"Uhura," he says so softly that Spock almost doesn't hear him.

For a moment there is no indication that she is conscious at all, but then something in her expression changes—the tiniest flicker across her brow, a twitch in her cheek, and suddenly she takes a breath and says, "Captain."

"You did it!" McCoy says, but Spock shakes his head slowly.

"No, doctor," he says. "The only memories she has recovered are the ones that involve the captain. Everything else is a blank."

"You can't know that!" McCoy says hotly.

But he does. He doesn't know how he knows, but as Spock watches, he sees Uhura tracking the captain's motions—and nothing else.

Turning to Spock, Kirk says, "You said it would be like opening a dam, that recovering some memories would trigger the others."

Spock looks from McCoy to Uhura to the captain before he answers.

"Apparently the recovered memories have all followed a memory trace where you are the common denominator," he says to the captain. "She doesn't appear to remember anyone else."

"But she could," the captain says. "If you do a mind meld with someone else, she can recover her memories of them, too."

"Presumably," Spock says, "though doing so for all her acquaintances is untenable."

"Meaning what?" McCoy snaps. "That you won't even try? How do you know that the more memories you trigger, the more they won't eventually spread out and cascade to others?"

It's possible, Spock thinks. Even though the memories he witnessed were older ones from the Academy, he was aware that at the edges of Uhura's consciousness, other associations were flickering like fireflies—snippets of sounds and sights from more recent times on the ship—the captain's voice sounding out reassurance during an ion storm two months ago, an afternoon sitting together in the mess having a quiet cup of coffee—a chorus of mundane memories flashing on the horizon of her mind.

"If there's a chance it will work," Kirk says, "you have to try."

A daunting task—and one the captain and the doctor cannot imagine. Spock is so weary from the meld that staying upright is costing him considerable effort. He feels an unaccustomed wave of despair.

From the biobed comes a soft rustle. Uhura, her lips parted, her eyes large and luminous.

"Come back," Uhura says before her eyes close.

For the third time that evening Spock is so unsettled that he presses his fingers to his side.

Taking a breath, he says, "Doctor, I believe it is your turn."

**A/N: Thanks to the bevy of readers and reviewers whose enthusiasm made this new chapter possible! Quite a challenge to write a convincing mind meld—so whether or not I was successful here, I appreciate your letting me know.**


	3. Doctor's Orders

**Chapter Three: Doctor's Orders**

**Disclaimer: I'm just an unpaid scribbler here, alas.**

"Now just a minute," Dr. McCoy says, feeling equal measures of alarm and dismay. Around him the normal beeps and hums of sickbay are almost jarring. "The last thing I need is to have you scrambling the inside of my head, Spock. As you pointed out, my duty as chief medical officer is to the entire ship. I won't be much good if I'm out of commission during some mind meld."

"It is not my choice either, Doctor," Spock says, one eyebrow almost to his bangs, "but I see no other option. You will not be—as you called it—out of commission for long."

Suddenly the warm, dark air of sickbay is cloying. Hooking his finger under the collar of his short-sleeved medical tunic, McCoy tugs and gulps. A foolish reaction, but he can't stop himself. The idea of anyone—especially someone as exacting as Spock—having access to his personal thoughts and memories is unsettling.

_On the other hand—_

He glances at Uhura still lying motionless on the biobed, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow.

After the mind meld with Jim, she had spoken—not much, but enough to convince McCoy that she is still _in there_. Whatever it is that makes her who she is has not been wiped out after all.

The captain stands with one hand resting on the edge of the biobed, the other dangling awkwardly at his side.

"Bones," he says, and McCoy hears the quiet command in his voice. _He's right, of course._ With an exasperated huff of air, McCoy turns and faces Spock.

"Alright, but not until you've had some time to rest. You aren't going to be any good to anyone if you fall over from exhaustion."

"I assure you, Doctor, I am able—"

"I don't care what you think you are able to do," McCoy says, cutting him off. "I'm telling you to go get an hour of rest."

"Vulcans have more stamina than humans."

"Then go get something to eat!"

"I am not hungry, Doctor."

"Then go solve math equations for an hour, or _something_! But _I _am tired and _I _am hungry, and since it's my turn at bat, I get to call the shots!"

As he often does when he raises his voice around the Vulcan, McCoy has the impression that Spock watches him like someone observing a bug under a glass, his expression detached, his eyes going distant and flat. The effect on McCoy is immediate. The cooler Spock becomes, the angrier the doctor feels.

He opens his mouth to enlist Jim's help when Spock swivels abruptly on his heel and walks out of sickbay.

"You okay, Bones?" Jim says, taking a step away from the biobed.

McCoy snorts.

"I'm fine!" he says. "But your first officer was looking a little green around the gills—if you'll pardon the expression. I just wasn't in the mood to pick him up off the floor."

Looking up at Jim, he sees an uncharacteristic tremor in his hand.

"And you need to rest, too," he says. From the corner of his eye he sees the captain start to protest and he lifts his hand to stop him.

"Save your breath, Jim," he says. "You look as tired as Spock does. That mind meld did a number on you both."

He turns and heads to his office, hearing the captain following close behind. Sliding into the chair behind his desk, he watches as the captain lowers himself into the other chair like someone sinking gingerly into a hot pool of water.

"You're right," Jim says. "It's weird, Bones, but when I was there, in my memory, it was like I was two people. I was living the memory again the way I did the first time, but I was watching myself, too."

"Oh, joy," McCoy says dourly, pulling a flask from the bottom drawer of his desk. "Something to look forward to. Here, take this."

"What is it?"

"Don't worry about that. Your doctor prescribed it so it's okay."

Handing the flask to Jim, he nods encouragement.

"Go on."

Jim unscrews the top and sniffs, wrinkling his nose.

"Smells like saurian brandy," he says.

"Because it is. Try it. You need it."

Tipping the flask to his lips, Jim takes a swig—and coughs so hard that McCoy is afraid he will spill the rest of the contents.

"Give me that," he says, reaching forward and taking the flask back. For a moment he holds it in his hand, considering, before upending it and taking a drink.

_There._ A jolt of fire courses down his throat and then the familiar afterbuzz blooms in his stomach and spreads out like a wave, all the way to the ends of his fingers and toes.

"Good thing I'm off duty," McCoy quips.

From his seat across the desk, Jim wipes his eyes and cups his hand over his mouth as he coughs once more.

"That's…got a wallop," Jim says, blinking. McCoy grins.

"Got me through a rough night or two after the divorce."

Looking up and meeting the captain's eyes, he adds, "Don't get to indulge as much anymore. A pity, too. It'd make dealing with argumentative captains and Vulcans a lot easier."

X X

"My mind to your mind," Spock says, the fingers of his left hand resting lightly on Lt. Uhura's face, his right hand lifted toward the doctor.

Dr. McCoy steels himself visibly like someone preparing to take a blow to the head.

For a moment Spock hesitates.

Perhaps he should find someone else. Nurse Chapel, for instance. He sees her with Lt. Uhura frequently. The odds are high that their shared memories will be sufficiently strong for a trace.

"Dammit, Spock," McCoy says, his mouth a thin line. "Hurry up and get this over with."

From the biobed, Lt. Uhura parts her lips and sighs.

Trying to keep himself from flinching, Spock closes the gap between his hand and the doctor's psi points.

Immediately his stomach lurches and he is bombarded with a kaleidoscope of sounds and colors. Slowly the revolving images shudder to a stop and he recognizes the bridge.

The telltale whistle of an incoming message blares from Lt. Uhura's communications console. Glancing up, Spock notes a line of Vulcan script flash across the monitor.

A message for him, most likely from his mother. Since the annulment from T'Pring, Spock has been in communication with his mother more frequently than usual—partly to reassure her that he is, in her words, _doing alright_, but also because her voice offers him a rare measure of comfort.

They are careful in their subspace calls to each other not to mention his father. Or rather, Amanda mentions him obliquely.

"Everyone here is doing well enough," she might say, and Spock hears the subtext—her invitation to ask why she has qualified her assessment with _enough_. Is his father not actually doing well?

But Spock doesn't ask.

He lifts his hand to toggle the speaker at the science station but instead of alerting him that he has a message, Lt. Uhura presses the intercom button on her console and says, "Dr. McCoy. It's a call from Suvan."

When the intercom clicks again, Spock hears McCoy say, "Send it to my quarters, Uhura. I'll head there now."

A quick exchange, barely noted. After his initial surprise, Spock had thought no more about it.

_So why is he here on the bridge now, reliving a moment from ten days ago? _

This memory is important to both the doctor and the lieutenant in some way.

His vision blurs briefly and he feels the familiar disorientation of falling into a different memory trace.

The bridge again, this time through Lt. Uhura's eyes rather than his own. The chronometer on her console shows a date a month ago, the incoming communications button lit. Again the monitor indicates that Vulcan is the source of the transmission.

Not a message for him, then. His mother's regular calls are more recent. This memory is before he had begun to feel the stirrings of _pon farr_, before the _Enterprise_ had taken him to the ill-starred _koon-et-kalifee_—

Quickly partitioning those memories away, he watches as Lt. Uhura activates the intercom.

"Dr. McCoy? Dr. M'Benga for you."

And suddenly Spock knows what Lt. Uhura knows—that Dr. McCoy speaks often to someone interning at the Vulcan Medical Facility in Shi'Kahr.

The image wobbles and he's in the B deck conference room—or rather he can see that Dr. McCoy and the captain are there, sitting on opposite sides of the table. Without knowing how he knows, Spock is aware that he is tracing memories backwards in time, each image earlier than the one before. It's confusing to travel back in time this way, but McCoy and the lieutenant are controlling the way these memories are unfolding, the way their story is being told, and he has no other choice than to let himself follow along.

_Like peeling an onion_, someone thinks—the doctor or the lieutenant, offering him a metaphor.

In this memory, the door to the corridor opens and Lt. Uhura walks in and hands the captain a PADD. Scanning it and then passing it across the table to the doctor, the captain says, "That's it?"

"I had trouble getting anything at all from them," the lieutenant says, her left hand resting on her hip. "Concerns about security, apparently."

From across the table, McCoy blurts out, "Damned Vulcan paranoia! It's not like I'm asking for their launch codes!"

Ignoring the doctor's outburst, the captain says, "Contact Admiral Stevens. Let me know when you have him."

"Aye, sir," the lieutenant says, exiting the conference room.

"Jim," McCoy says, "if there's a new flu outbreak on Vulcan, I need to know! It can't be a coincidence that two days after we ferry those Vulcan researchers to Starbase 19, Spock comes down with this…whatever it is."

With a start Spock realizes that he is seeing a scene from 63 days ago when he had experienced a panoply of symptoms—fever, chills, gastric distress, headache, anorexia—that was similar enough to a strain of human influenza that at first McCoy had assumed a mutated version had jumped species.

The genetic sequencing, however, showed an alien virus. _Vulcan in origin?_ The only Vulcans in close proximity had been the researchers. They were on the ship less than 30 hours—but Spock was in close contact, giving them a tour of the science labs. Soon afterwards he showed up in sickbay so flushed and sweaty that McCoy was alarmed.

When McCoy insisted that he stay in sickbay overnight for monitoring, Spock didn't protest—which in itself was alarming, given his celebrated need for privacy. After a miserable night, however, Spock was no worse and McCoy reluctantly let him return to his quarters under strict orders that he stay there.

"Don't even think about going to the bridge," he warned, and from the way Spock moved slowly down the corridor toward the turbolift, McCoy knew he wouldn't try.

When McCoy tried to contact the researchers to see if they, too, had come down with an infection, his request for information was denied. Nor would the Vulcan Medical Facility give him any information about active viral epidemics.

And then to be handed this—a formula for a simple oral analgesic for symptomatic relief. It is as insulting as it is maddening.

"What about your own tests?" the captain asks, and McCoy squirms. Genetic sequencing is tricky and time consuming, even with human DNA. Trying to untangle the intricacies of Vulcan DNA without access to the Vulcan computer database is almost impossible. Without the sequencing, he can't know the best course of treatment.

"Slow," he admits. "I just don't know enough about Vulcan physiology. Oh, I know the major things—but at the molecular level, I'm struggling, Jim."

"We should hear something soon on your request for a trained xenospecialist," the captain says. "When I talk to Admiral Stevens, I'll press him on it."

"Good," McCoy says, frowning. "I think I might have a lead on someone at the hospital complex on Vulcan. Not a lot of good it will do Spock right now, though."

"How is he?"

"How should I know? He doesn't share much. Chapel took him some soup a little while ago. At least he's not worse. I'll replicate some of this—"

He picks the PADD up from the table and stands up.

"Give that to someone else to do," the captain says, his tone suggesting he doesn't want an argument. "You've pulled enough all-nighters this week."

The scene blurs and whirls as Spock digests what he has seen. The doctor has obviously been concerned about Spock's wellbeing—no, more than that: _dismayed_ at the limits of what he can do for him. Sending out a tendril into McCoy's consciousness, Spock senses firsthand the reservoir of concern there—his anger at being unable to mitigate the ravages of Spock's _pon farr_, his helplessness while Spock had suffered with the flu.

"I hate to think what might happen if he was ever seriously hurt," McCoy says to the captain in a brief, connected memory that flits past like a leaf caught in a whirlpool. "That's why we have to find someone who's had hands-on experience."

Suddenly Spock understands the transfer notice he had gotten yesterday from Starfleet—about an addition to the staff—a human doctor who until recently had been finishing up an internship on Vulcan.

The whirling slows and stops and this time Spock watches as Lt. Uhura gathers her food tray in the mess and sets it beside an already-seated McCoy hunched over the remains of his lunch.

"Can I join you?" she says, and for a moment Spock thinks that the doctor is going to turn her down. His face is screwed up oddly and he pauses before he answers.

"Well," he says slowly, "you've been warned. I'm not good company today."

Bumping his shoulder with her own as she slides into her seat, the lieutenant says, "When are you ever good company?"

"Fair enough," he says, but Spock realizes that the lieutenant isn't fooled. McCoy's smile doesn't extend to his eyes.

_Fascinating._ Spock marvels at how well Lt. Uhura can parse the doctor's facial expression. And not just the doctor, or humans in general, but everyone she sees, human or…otherwise.

That idea makes him uncomfortable, but he sets it aside to watch her more closely as she leans toward the doctor and says, "The message I patched through earlier for you? From Earth? Want to talk about it?"

"Not particularly," McCoy says, lifting his cup to his lips and taking a deliberate sip. "You've heard it all before."

"That bad?"

"You don't want to know."

"At least she keeps in touch."

Lt. Uhura is frowning—her tone of voice intense and concerned. McCoy shakes his head.

"Not often. Just when we have to set up Joanna's schedule. Jocelyn wanted to know if I was going to be planetside during the school holidays."

"Are you? Going to be planetside, I mean?"

Balling up his paper napkin and letting it drop on his tray, McCoy says, "Nope. Once again I let my own kid down. Like I always do, apparently."

The lieutenant shifts on the bench so that she can turn and look McCoy in the eye. The implied intimacy in her action—the undercurrent of friendship and comity it implies—makes Spock pause.

_Why hasn't he noticed this before?_

"Leonard," Lt. Uhura says softly, "your daughter knows you love her. She understands what it means that you are in Starfleet, that your schedule keeps you away."

"Yeah, well, when I was in private practice it wasn't any better. I've never been good at this balancing act between work and home."

Lt. Uhura reaches out and takes the doctor's hand in her own, squeezing it before letting it go.

Some unspoken signal passes between them that Spock is unable to decipher, even though he has access to both their thoughts.

"Let's talk about something else," McCoy says.

Picking up her sandwich and keeping her eyes forward, Lt. Uhura says, "So, how's Suvan doing?"

"Suvan?"

"Don't play coy, doctor. I see all your communications logs, remember?"

McCoy gives a tentative smile and says, "Oh, that. He's fine, I think. His teachers say he's the top student in life sciences—no surprise there. He'll have to decide soon where he wants to go to school when he leaves the institute. If he wants to go to school. I've encouraged it. There's money if he does."

"What else would he do?"

McCoy shrugs.

"His parents were colonists on the Albora Beta outpost. He might want to return there when he graduates."

"They were, what? Farmers?" Lt. Uhura says, spearing her salad with a fork.

"Botanists," McCoy says. "Researchers in crop rotation yields, that sort of thing. Suvan still remembers that life."

"He was six when they died?"

"Seven. He's been living at the institute since then."

"Have you ever told Commander Spock that you're sponsoring a Vulcan orphan?"

"No," McCoy says, standing up and picking up his tray, "and I never will. And don't you say a word, either. That's the last thing I need, having that green-blooded computer think I'm a big softie."

As McCoy heads to the tray disposal, Spock probes the lieutenant's feelings about that day—her sadness on McCoy's behalf, and her anger, too, at a woman she has never met and probably never will—the doctor's ex-wife who hasn't made his relationship with his young daughter easy or comfortable.

And her loyalty for him—her willingness to hide his secret compassionate side, even though she doesn't understand his reason for asking for her silence.

Like the captain, Dr. McCoy is someone the lieutenant cares about deeply on a personal level that catches Spock off guard. They are more than colleagues, though he cannot articulate exactly what they mean to each other, or how they are tangled together.

Watching the lieutenant now—her eyes following the doctor as he makes his way out of the crowded mess—gives Spock an unusual sensation in his side, as if he has just discovered that he has lost something valuable—misplaced it, perhaps, or let it slip away unnoticed.

One more memory—the oldest one of all. A dark basement in the medical students' dorm at the Academy, the air thick with smoke from handheld tobacco products. In one corner of the room, the doctor sits with several other uniformed cadets at a table playing cards. Poker, from the sound of it.

"I'll see your fifty and raise you twenty," McCoy says, and the cadet to his left mutters loudly and places his cards face down on the table.

"I'm out," the cadet says. The other two cadets also place their cards down. McCoy rakes the pile of credits to his side of the table.

"Thank you, gentlemen," he says, an expression of happiness or triumph on his features. The other cadets get up and move away.

Suddenly Uhura is there, not yet a lieutenant. She, too, is sporting cadet red, her hair cascading around her shoulders instead of cut short and styled up the way she characteristically wears it.

"You calling it a night?" she asks, and McCoy lets his gaze travel over her before he shakes his head slowly.

"Not if you're game," he says, scooping up the cards and tapping them on the table to straighten their edges.

Uhura takes a seat directly opposite the doctor and eyes him silently as he shuffles the deck and offers it to her. With a practiced motion, she separates it in two and McCoy picks it up and deals them each a hand of five cards.

McCoy's confidence—indeed, what Spock's mother would have called _smugness_—is apparent even to someone who has as much trouble reading human expressions as Spock does.

_An act—to deceive other players?_

Uhura places a single card on the table and McCoy hands her another.

"Dealer takes three," he says, still smiling.

The betting begins then—and from his vantage point in the nexus of both of their memories, Spock can see that Uhura will easily win the hand—with a pair and three of a kind. The doctor, by contrast, has a single pair.

Still, Dr. McCoy places a wager too large to be merited by the cards he holds, a tendency that Spock has noted in other risky ventures the doctor sometimes makes. In short order he loses that hand, and then the next, and the next, until his previous winnings are almost completely gone.

And with it, his good humor. By the time he has no more credits to wager, he is grousing.

"How come I've never seen you down here before?" he asks testily as Uhura collects the credits in a neat handful. "You haven't even told me your name."

Her lips quirked, her eyes crinkled, she says, "Uhura. And you are-?"

"McCoy," he says brusquely. "What kind of name is that? Uhura?"

"Swahili," she says, still smiling. "It means freedom."

"Well," McCoy says, pushing back his chair, "that fits. You certainly liberated enough of my money."

Her laugh is instantaneous and silvery—easy and unaffected, the way Spock often hears her laugh from a distance—in the rec room, for instance, when someone tells what apparently is an amusing anecdote.

And then McCoy laughs with her—so explosively and loud that Spock suspects his laughter is a diversion from some other darker, more private, musing.

"Ms. Uhura," he says, proferring his arm, "perhaps you will let me take you out for a celebratory drink. In honor of your name—and to mark the first time that I've had such a worthy adversary."

"Is that what we are?" she asks, looping her arm around his elbow. "Adversaries?"

"You'll have to forgive me," McCoy says, leading her toward the door. "I'm so used to fighting with my ex, I've forgotten that women can be good company, too."

"Want to talk about it?" Uhura says, darting a grin, and McCoy shakes his head.

"Not tonight," he says. "I've been humiliated enough for one day."

X X X

The sickbay comes back into focus slowly. This time when he opens his eyes, Spock is not surprised that Lt. Uhura is watching him, that Dr. McCoy is fussing over them both.

"Sit down before you fall down," the doctor says, and suddenly his knees give way and he is sitting in a chair that materializes behind him. Looking dully at his hands resting in his lap, Spock realizes that the motion has broken his physical connection to both the doctor and the lieutenant.

"Don't go!"

That from Lt. Uhura—though for a moment Spock isn't certain if she has spoken out loud or in his mind.

"No one's going anywhere," Captain Kirk says, and Dr. McCoy says, "Uhura, how are you feeling?"

"I'm tired," she says.

Again Spock isn't sure if she speaks aloud or just to him. Her voice feels like an echo in his thoughts—tinny and far away, and frightened. He shivers in his chair.

"Help him!" the lieutenant says. Of their own accord, Spock's eyes close and he feels himself listing to the side.

With an effort, he rights himself and opens his eyes again.

"Doctor," he says, "I am…alright. Lt. Uhura is the one who needs your assistance."

And there in the doctor's expression Spock reads concern and alarm.

With an odd detachment, he wonders if his newfound ability to understand the significance of the narrowed eyes, the pursed lips, the slight flush along McCoy's neck is an artifact of his meld with the lieutenant.

_Fascinating._

Some growing worry that began in the meld forces itself to the front of his consciousness, and he feels his heart begin to race.

"Doctor," he says as quickly as he can, "we have to hurry."

Exhaustion pulls him down and he can't form the rest of the words.

But he doesn't need to. McCoy turns to the captain and finishes his thought for him.

"Jim," he says, "I know what he means. I saw it, too, when I was…there. The memory traces are starting to fade. If we don't reactivate the entire network soon, we're going to lose her."

**A/N: Thanks to everyone who continues to read this story—and double thanks to everyone who leaves a review! Telling McCoy's story backwards this way was tricky, and even now I'm not sure how well it works. Thanks for all your feedback!**

**Thanks, too, to Startrekfanwriter for giving this a look-see. Check out some of her recent Loki fanfiction listed in my faves, including her newest, "The Snow Wife," which is a delightful mashup of "The Avengers" and Japanese mythology.**


	4. The Belly of the Beast

**Chapter Four: The Belly of the Beast**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing here. **

"Lieutenant."

Lt. Uhura opens her eyes at the sound of the captain's voice. For the past two hours she's been sedated with an experimental cocktail of stimulants and suppressants to stabilize her neural activity. For the first time since Nomad's attack, Uhura looks rested, almost peaceful. Kirk hates to wake her, but McCoy thinks that even without another mind meld, he can trigger the necessary avalanche of memories.

Standing at the monitor at the head of the biobed, Dr. McCoy says, "Keep talking, Jim."

"Uhura," Captain Kirk says, louder this time. "I need you to do something. I need you to stay awake and talk to me for awhile."

"Captain," she says, her voice just above a whisper. "Nomad. It came onto the bridge. It was asking questions."

"I know," Kirk says. "What else do you remember?"

Uhura closes her eyes again, frowning, and for a moment the captain is worried that she has lapsed back into unconsciousness. He looks around for McCoy but the doctor is facing the monitor and making notations on a handheld PADD.

Suddenly Uhura's eyes fly open and she reaches out to grip Kirk's forearm.

"It's dangerous! It—did something—to me. You have to warn everyone!"

Letting his hand rest on top of hers, Kirk says, "You don't need to worry. Security is keeping Nomad in the brig. Mr. Spock is examining it now. If anyone can figure out that thing—"

"No, Captain! It's dangerous! It will hurt him!"

"Jim," McCoy says, "she's getting too agitated. Her endocrine levels are spiking again."

Leaning forward, Kirk says, "Uhura! Lieutenant! Listen to me! No one will get hurt. Everything's under control. I have—everything—under control."

Uhura grows quiet but her eyes are still large, almost wild. The monitor beeps in time to her heartbeat—a rapid thrumming that clearly has the doctor concerned. From the corner of his eye, Kirk sees McCoy adjust a hypospray, and in another moment, he hears the hiss and sees Uhura sag slightly, her eyelids fluttering and then closing.

"It's no good," the doctor says. "We're going to need Spock after all."

"I'll get him here as soon as I can," Kirk says, pausing at the door, "but right now I need him with Nomad. We have to find a way to reason with that—thing—before it turns on someone else."

He turns to leave but the doctor calls him back.

"Jim, I'm telling you. If we don't reconnect her memories soon, the traces will dissipate permanently and then we'll have lost her for good. She's living on borrowed time."

"I understand that, doctor," Kirk says, a heaviness settling in the pit of his stomach, "but until we deal with Nomad, we're all living on borrowed time."

X X

Spock sits, arms crossed, eyeing Nomad as it floats in front of him. Just inside the door of the brig examination room, the captain asks for an update.

"An almost human stubbornness," Spock says, attempting—and failing—to keep the irritation from his voice, his physical exhaustion undoubtedly to blame. "Nomad refuses to lower its shields. Until it does, I am unable to scan it."

The captain quickly intervenes, instructing Nomad to comply with the scan.

But again Spock runs into a roadblock, this time because large portions of Nomad's programming are hieroglyphics as far as the scanner is concerned, unreadable.

There is, however, an alternative to the scanner.

"A mind meld," Spock says, gratified that Captain Kirk follows his line of reasoning so quickly.

"That could be dangerous," Kirk says. "You saw what it did to Uhura."

"It is not without risk," Spock agrees, "but we are pressed for time."

If he's right, they are more pressed for time than even the captain realizes. With a nod, the captain gives his approval and tells Nomad to permit Spock to touch it.

As odd as it has been to link three minds together, letting his consciousness slip into the interior workings of Nomad is even stranger. Unlike the dizzy disorientation that accompanies his entrance into the minds of his human crewmates, sharing Nomad's awareness is more like stepping through a door: one moment he is in his own mind, and the next he is traveling down clearly delineated circuits and switches, like walking through a featureless metal corridor. No sounds or smells, no nuances or connotations—just yes and no and black and white, logic without color or shades of meaning. An airy world, cool and sterile.

Spock shivers and bends low to duck into a side hallway.

_The accident,_ Nomad's measured voice says, and Spock knows that he is being given a tour of Nomad's recent history. The hallway is littered with metal shards and burrs of rock from an asteroid that had collided and damaged Nomad three years after it was launched from Earth.

Rendered deaf and mute when its communication antenna was destroyed, Nomad drifted rudderless in space, sending a useless signal faithfully into the void, straining its programming to pick up a signal in return—until something akin to self-awareness flickered into being.

_Loneliness. Despair. Longing and homesickness_—emotions Nomad had recorded but had never understood.

_You understand, too,_ Nomad says to Spock, and an image from Spock's childhood flashes up around him, like a hologram.

The memory of an overheard conversation—his human grandmother sitting on a chair in the living room of her home in Seattle, his mother seated across from her on the sofa. He couldn't have been more than two or three—possibly younger—and during one of their rare visits, his grandmother Grayson's disapproval of her daughter's marriage to the Vulcan ambassador a steady unspoken subtext.

"Does he ever speak?" Spock remembers his grandmother saying, her gaze raking over him. Beside him on the sofa his mother bristled, the fingers of one hand twitching through his hair quickly, her intake of breath sharp and defined.

"He talks," she said, looking up at her mother. "He's just shy. When he gets to know you—"

"Is something wrong with him?" his grandmother interrupted. "He seems—odd."

Suddenly he was in his mother's arms as she struggled to stand up.

"We have to go," she said, turning on her heel and walking toward the door. Over her shoulder he watched the image of his grandmother growing smaller, her pinched expression unchanging.

_You were broken as well?_ Nomad asks, but before Spock can answer, his memories dissipate like fog and he's back in Nomad's consciousness.

Another hallway, this one larger, darker, with a distinctive alien sensibility.

_Tan Ru,_ Nomad says, and Spock looks up and sees a cylindrical object three times the size of Nomad—also damaged in the asteroid field, struggling like Nomad to fulfill its mission.

As if he is watching a slow motion holovid, Spock sees Tan Ru and Nomad circling each other, their robotic arms extended, their probes maneuvering until they are latched together as a single entity with an intensity that is almost sexual.

_Purpose again,_ Spock hears Nomad say, its tinny voice uncharacteristically animated, almost…joyful.

And the last hallway of Nomad's memory, this one leading to planets teeming with lifeforms. Nomad's quick survey shows them to be biological in origin, and as such, chaotic, imperfect.

Aiming Tan Ru's soil sterilizing rays through a booster array, Nomad feels again the sense of purpose it craves when the infestation on the planet is neutralized successfully. In the distance, another planet waits.

And another. And another. A long line of satisfying tasks lies before Nomad, despite an undercurrent of misgiving….

Sterilize, sterilize…any contradictions in the programming set aside…sterilize, sterilize—

"Spock! Spock!"

From a distance Spock hears Captain Kirk calling to Nomad, commanding it to cease its contact. Abruptly a door in his mind shuts and he is once again alone.

He opens his eyes in the corridor outside the brig, the captain's expression one of unmistakable alarm.

"Fascinating, Captain," Spock says, as much genuine commentary as it is an attempt to reassure the captain that he is unharmed. With a few labored breaths he tells Captain Kirk what he has seen during the meld—the accident, the repair, the new creature calling itself Nomad.

"A changeling," the captain says, rubbing his chin the way he does when he ruminates on a subject at length. "An ancient Earth legend, Mr. Spock. A changeling was a fairy child left in the place of a human baby. The changeling assumed the identity of the human child."

A colorful metaphor, but Spock can see why the captain makes it. The Nomad who is sitting in the brig of the _Enterprise_ is not the same device who left Earth but a very dangerous imposter.

X X X

"Are you sure this is really necessary?"

Normally pale, Christine Chapel looks positively sickly—sweaty even. For a moment Leonard McCoy considers whether or not he should ask her to do this. More than any other crew member, she has reason to resist the intrusion of a mind meld with Spock. Her infatuation—no, her _affection_—for the first officer is no secret to anyone except perhaps Christine herself—and of course, to Spock, who wouldn't recognize an emotion if it jumped up and hit him.

But McCoy recognizes it. The way Christine stutters and stumbles when Spock happens by sickbay—it's maddening, seeing such a strong, efficient, smart woman tongue-tied and awkward. More maddening still to see how oblivious the Vulcan is to it, his cool indifference like a blow every single time.

Or worse, that scene outside Spock's quarters two months ago when Christine had run forward with a shriek, Spock hurling a bowl of _plomeek_ soup behind her, shouting, his face contorted.

Unfair to hold that in mind, McCoy knows—but still. He'll take that image with him to his grave.

No wonder Christine blanches now.

"I won't force you," he says. "But you're one of her best friends. Her memories of you will be particularly strong."

He can see the calculus in Christine's shifting expression as she weighs what she will do—and with a little puff of air, she nods.

"If it will help," she says.

From behind him the door to sickbay opens.

"Bones, we have to hurry," Jim says, and McCoy turns to see him closing the gap with a long stride, Spock bringing up the rear.

"That's what I've been telling you," McCoy says. "I don't know how much longer I can stabilize her with medication alone."

"Holding Nomad in the brig may become problematic," Spock says. "It believes we are keeping it from its assigned purpose."

"To destroy more planets!"

"To destroy anything that is imperfect," Kirk says. "Including us."

"Then destroy it first!" McCoy explodes. "What are you waiting for!"

"Doing so will not be easy," Spock says. "It is heavily armed and well shielded."

McCoy opens his mouth to deliver a snappy retort but before he can, the deck under his feet begins to vibrate.

"What the—"

All around him glass beakers and small equipment crash to the floor.

With a lunge, Kirk skitters to the wall and slaps his palm against the intercom button.

"Scotty! What's going on?"

"It's that beastie, Captain! It came down here to engineering and started doing something to the matter-anti-matter drive! We're shaking to pieces past warp nine already!"

"On my way!"

"Jim!" McCoy calls out, but the captain says, "That'll have to wait, Doctor! If we can't stop the engines, we're all going to blow apart!"

**A/N: Short but I hope exciting! Thanks for letting me know what you think!**


	5. Confession

**Chapter Five: Confession**

**Disclaimer: I make no money here!**

As soon as he enters engineering, Kirk sees Nomad hovering near the access grid to the warp core. Scotty stands next to the useless control panel, another engineer frantically pressing buttons in a vain attempt to bring the engines back under control.

"Nomad," Kirk says, crossing the floor, "stop what you're doing."

"Is there a problem, Creator? I have increased the engine efficiency by 57 percent."

Although Nomad looks like a large metal box, Kirk finds himself turning and looking at it when he speaks, as if it is alive.

_Which for all intents and purposes, it is._

"You will destroy my ship. Its structure can't stand the stress of that much power. Turn off your repair operations."

He tries to keep the anger from his voice, pitching his tone low and reasonable. Nomad hesitates for a moment and then says, "Acknowledged. It is reversed as ordered."

The unnatural whine of the engines slows and the deck stops shaking. Kirk lets out a breath he hadn't known he was holding.

"Mr. Scott, give Sulu warp 2 and keep it there."

This is as much for Nomad's benefit as Scotty's.

Behind him, the doors slide open and Spock comes in. Two security officers wait outside where Spock has obviously stationed them, an unusual precaution. Kirk gives him an inquisitive look and Spock says, "Captain, I have examined the brig. The force field door of the security cell is damaged and the guards have vanished. I must assume they are dead."

"You killed two of my—" Kirk begins, his voice rough with anger, but Nomad cuts him off.

"Creator," it says, its voice mechanical and dispassionate, "your biological units are inefficient."

Kirk can hardly bear listening.

"Nomad, it's about time I told you who and what you are. I'm a biological unit and I created you!"

From the corner of his eye Kirk sees Spock's eyebrows fly up. Nomad lets out a whir and then says, "Non-sequitur. Biological units are inherently inferior. This is an inconsistency."

Steadying himself with a deep breath, Kirk speaks slowly and sharply, enunciating each word.

"Nomad, there are two men waiting outside. You will not harm them. They will escort you back to the waiting area. You will stay there and you will do nothing."

"I am programmed to investigate," Nomad says. _A hint of defiance?_ Kirk isn't sure.

"I have given you new programming," he says as forcefully as he can, "and you will implement it."

Starting toward the entrance to engineering, Nomad intones, "There is much to be considered before returning to the launch point. I must re-evaluate."

As soon as the door shuts behind him, Kirk turns to Spock.

"Re-evaluate?"

"I suspect it is about to re-evaluate its creator. Captain, it may have been unwise to admit to Nomad that you are a biological unit. In Nomad's eyes you must now undoubtedly appear imperfect."

Of course Spock is right. Kirk flushes in anger, this time with himself.

"A foolish mistake," he mutters, and Spock adds, "Even worse. Nomad just now made a reference to its launch point—Earth."

The implication is more than alarming.

"Spock, do you think it's possible that it got a fix on Earth when it tapped into our computers?"

"I do not believe there is much beyond Nomad's capability."

"And we've shown it the way home, and when it gets there—"

Kirk lets his words drift off, unwilling to speak the unimaginable. Spock, however, feels no such compunction.

"It will find Earth infested with imperfect biological units."

The conclusion looms before them and Kirk says, "And it will carry out its prime directive—sterilize."

"It is imperative that you maintain Nomad's cooperation," Spock says, and Kirk nods. At least for now it has agreed to return to the brig and remain under surveillance.

As they exit engineering and head toward the turbolift, the intercom whistles and McCoy's voice reverberates in the corridor.

"Sickbay to Mr. Spock."

"Spock here," Spock says, toggling open a wall connection.

"Things are deteriorating faster than expected. You're needed right away."

"Understood," Spock says, switching off the intercom. Turning to Kirk, he says, "Captain?"

"Go," Kirk says. "I think we're safe for now. But just in case, try to hurry."

X X

Falling into the mind meld this time is like stepping into a familiar room. With a start, Spock takes a breath and tries to orient himself.

_The hospital at the Academy in San Francisco—the small outpatient center where cadets frequently receive treatment for minor ailments such as viral infections or fractured bones._

Looking around, he sees a tall male nurse behind the intake counter. Several patients, most of them uniformed cadets, sit on the chairs around the perimeter of the room. Just entering the room is Nurse Chapel.

Or _Christine_, as she's corrected him more than once.

She walks to the intake counter and picks up a PADD, calling someone's name as she does. One of the cadets rises and follows her back out.

From his vantage point, Spock is able to see everything and everyone in the room. Somehow this place at this time is important to both Christine and Lieutenant Uhura, though he isn't certain how.

The outside door slides open and Spock sees a flash of red: The lieutenant, leaning heavily on another cadet's shoulder. Spock's first impulse is to dart forward to help—but he's only an observer in the mind meld, not a participant.

Christine is suddenly there on Uhura's other side, slipping her arm around her and leading her to a chair.

"What happened?" she asks, and Uhura grimaces and leans down to touch her ankle.

"I think it's just sprained," she says through clenched teeth.

"How—"

"Parrises squares," she says, and Christine looks up at the other cadet.

"Uh, yeah," he says. "We were practicing for the semi-finals this week and, uh, someone knocked her off the tower lookout—"

"You?" Christine says it with just enough jaundice in her voice to make the cadet grin sheepishly. Even Uhura gives a half-hearted smirk—right before she winces out loud again.

"It was an accident," the cadet says, and Christine shakes her head and says, "Isn't it always. Johnson! Call for a chair."

Almost at once a chair mounted on a floater pad appears—the tall male nurse piloting it close while Christine helps Uhura onto it.

"I gotta run," the cadet says with an apologetic wave. As he exits the front door, Christine and Uhura share a look—some sort of wry, unspoken commentary about the departing cadet?—and then Christine aims the chair through the waiting area to the first examination room.

Because this is a shared memory, Spock senses both women's thoughts simultaneously. Uhura's memories are the sharpest, probably because they are heightened by her physical pain, but Christine's memories are surprisingly clear as well.

With a sudden insight, Spock knows why. She's in pain, too—emotional pain that creates a steady undercurrent of sadness.

It doesn't, however, stop her from doing an admirable job of getting an image of Uhura's ankle, giving her an analgesic hypo and having the diagnostic PADD calibrated and ready when the doctor walks in.

Leonard McCoy—ten pounds lighter than he is now, with a gauntness to his face Spock doesn't recall.

He is, however, just as cranky.

"You realize," he says by way of greeting as he takes the PADD from Christine and glares at Uhura, "that this little _injury_ of yours may have cost me a fortune?"

Spock feels Christine's confusion and Uhura's amusement.

"You realize," Uhura says, "that betting on semi-final sporting events is illegal."

"So is playing poker for credits on Starfleet property," McCoy says, looking over the PADD, "but that doesn't seem to stop anyone."

"It's only gambling if there's a possibility of losing," Uhura says, waving her hand in the air like someone shooing a fly. "Playing against you is a sure thing."

At that McCoy laughs.

"You know him?" Christine asks as she slips an ankle support brace on Uhura's foot.

"Too well," Uhura says. "How long have you known him?"

"Just met this week. I'm Christine."

"Ms. Chapel is filling in temporarily," McCoy says. "I'm hoping we can convince her to join Starfleet and stay."

Spock sees Christine make what he's come to know as a gesture of her customary self-effacement—a motion of her hand as if she is physically brushing away a compliment. He's wondered about it before—why she is so reluctant to draw attention to herself, unwilling to hold her accomplishments up in a favorable light.

"I'm just taking a break from real life," she says, darting a quick glance from Uhura to McCoy, "for now."

In his own real life Spock rarely understands the subtext of such words and meanings, but here in the meld he knows immediately that Christine is lonely, is sending out an overture of friendship or companionship.

_Fascinating._

"If you weren't so banged up," McCoy says to Uhura, his lips pursed, "I'd ask you to join us for a drink after work."

"You're not planning to stand up at the bar, are you?"

"Well, no—"

"Then I don't see how my being banged up is any sort of impediment."

"Good," McCoy says. "You can help me talk Christine into staying. Since Jenko left, we've been short staffed in emergency triage."

The examination room grows faint and a pulsing, noisy light replaces it. A bar, obviously, the same day of their first meeting.

The three of them are sitting in a curved booth of Moe's, a popular bar near the west gate of the Academy campus. The walls are dark and almost dank; the selections of fermented beverages small and choice of food stuffs even smaller. Spock has only been here twice during his time at the Academy, though apparently Uhura and the doctor are regulars, if the familiarity of the bartender and the waiters is an indication.

"It's just that—"

Christine is leaning forward over her drink, her voice slightly muffled, as if she is suffering from a rhinovirus. Indeed, her nose is red and her eyes watery.

Uhura puts her hand on Christine's arm.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I know it must be hard."

"It's just that," Christine continues, "I thought he'd be gone six months finishing up the survey and then we'd get married. If I hadn't been in the middle of my own bio-research project, I'd have gone with him to Exo III—"

"And been lost, too," McCoy says, picking up his glass and taking a swig of something thick and brown. "But you didn't go. You're here. And unless you want to keep on doing bio-research, Starfleet's as good a place as any to practice medicine."

Sniffling once, Christine says, "I don't know. I hadn't thought about doing clinical nursing again."

"Then think about it. We need you. You're good at what you do—even I can see that after only a week."

The bar disappears and a flurry of images whirls by—Christine and Uhura sharing meals and conversations together in San Francisco—an Academy graduation where Uhura receives a commendation and congratulations from Christine afterwards—Christine's excited call to Uhura when she learns they will both be posted on the _Enterprise_—a giddy evening in the rec room of the ship during some sort of festivity—

A quiet moment in the mess, just the two of them drinking coffee, when Spock walks in and both women fall silent—Spock convinced that moments before he had been the topic of conversation—

The scene dissolves again, this time morphing into the bridge of the _Enterprise_. The lieutenant is seated at her place at communications, and Christine is standing next to the captain's chair. Looking down, Spock sees that he is at the science station—another memory of a time when he was actually present.

Over the comm the voice of Roger Korby is speaking—Christine Chapel's fiancé, presumed dead on a failed expedition five years earlier. The reason, in many ways, that Christine is in Starfleet—though Spock has never put all the pieces together until now.

And something more—his sudden understanding that this moment—when the _Enterprise_ passes close enough to the frozen planet where the expedition was lost—is also part of the reason Christine joined Starfleet—her unspoken hope that she could somehow find Dr. Korby still alive, waiting for rescue.

_Astonishingly, her hope seemed for a time to come true._

Spock sees Christine's elation at hearing his voice—sees how Uhura shares her friend's excitement, sees her give her a quick hug as she leaves with the captain for the surface of the planet.

Feels their mutual dismay when the man who appeared to be Roger Korby turned out to be a hollow android copy of the brilliant scientist—and Christine had been forced to live through her loss again.

_No more memories, please,_ Christine says through the meld, exhaustion weighing her down, and he hears Uhura murmuring softly.

_It is too soon to leave,_ he says. _The lieutenant's synaptic cascade has not yet been triggered_—

Rather than hearing any words, he feels Christine's resignation—and with it, her resolve to continue.

_A stronger memory, then,_ she says. _Perhaps this will work._

Sickbay. A monitor on the wall shows that it is a year ago during the mission to Psi 2000, when the crew had become infected with the virus that had lowered their inhibitions.

_Is it necessary to see this? _he thinks.

Surely this memory—the one he shares with Christine alone—has no place in this mind meld. Lieutenant Uhura had no part in it, had been on the bridge, vainly trying to reroute communications to cut off Kevin Riley's wailing song—

As he did a year ago, he watches, transfixed, as Christine crosses the empty sickbay and moves so closely into his personal space that he feels the heat and electricity from her body—his back against the door jamb, her right hand slipping up to his ear, the fingers of her left hand pressed into his palm.

"I'm in love with you, Mr. Spock. You, the human Mr. Spock. The Vulcan Mr. Spock."

"Nurse—"

"Christine, _please_," she says, a note of pleading in her voice. "I see things, how honest you are. I know what you feel. You hide it, but you _do_ have feelings. How we must hurt you, torture you."

His response is automatic, a reflex of years of training—though even as he says it, he recognizes it as a lie.

"I am in control of my emotions."

Christine moves closer.

"The others believe that. I don't. I love you. I don't know why, but I love you. I do love you, just as you are."

And then, like someone confessing a secret sorrow, she says, "Oh, I love you."

Forced to watch again, he sees her incline her face to his hands, kissing his fingertips. An erotic action beyond measure, yet all he feels is despair.

"I'm sorry," he says, his breath labored, his heart pounding in his side. "I _am_ sorry."

Sorry that she has revealed this pain to him—and sorrier still that he cannot return her feelings.

"Christine," she prompts, and because he does not want to cause her more pain, he complies. "Christine."

_I wanted you to know_, he hears her say—but not to him. In the corner of their shared minds he feels Uhura's empathetic presence—senses how this scene which neither he nor Christine has ever spoken about defines them somehow, in a way that Uhura has suspected.

And suddenly he understands why Christine wanted to show this to Uhura—not because it shows her own shamefaced confession of love but because it shows his refusal of it.

Christine sees what he himself cannot acknowledge, that his feelings for the lieutenant have drifted beyond respect and admiration to something bordering on affection and desire—forged by hours of working side-by-side on the bridge, by moments of teasing, of occasions in the rec room when they have entertained the crew with music—

_I see it, even if you don't,_ Christine says, though whether her words are addressed to him or Uhura, Spock isn't sure.

With a mental leap he breaks the bond and opens his eyes.

"What is it?" McCoy says at his elbow.

"I—" Spock begins, looking at Uhura on the biobed, her eyes fluttering, Christine rising slowly from the chair at the bedside, "I was unsuccessful."

**A/N: I was all set to write this chapter when the new trailers for "Star Trek Into Darkness" came out and hijacked my brain. I've written a short fic based on the first nine minutes of the movie if you want to come along for that ride. Called "Running in the Dark," it has spoilers, so proceed with caution! **

**Thanks to everyone for posting reviews and being patient! The next chapter won't take so long to post, I promise!**


	6. A Surprising Use of Logic

**Chapter Six: A Surprising Use of Logic**

**Disclaimer: No money made here. My only thanks are your comments.**

"You're awake!"

Christine's comment isn't as foolishly self-evident as it sounds. Although Lt. Uhura's eyes are open, the look on her face is anything but alert. Leaning over the biobed, Dr. McCoy waves a handheld scanner over the lieutenant and studies the readouts.

"Well, she's more awake than she _was_," he says, "but she's still not out of the woods."

"Uhura!" Christine says, as if she is calling to someone in a distance. "It's me, Christine."

She angles herself until she is looking directly into Uhura's face. At once the lieutenant begins tracking her with her eyes.

"Christine?"

"Yes! Yes, it's me! And Dr. McCoy is here. We've been worried about you."

"We were at Moe's," Uhura says softly, looking from Christine to McCoy. "Talking about something."

"The mind meld," Christine says in answer to McCoy's unasked question. "We were showing Spock how we met."

"And graduation," Uhura goes on. "You were there. And the _Enterprise. _We were on the bridge. There was an accident, but I can't remember—"

She winces visibly and blinks her eyes.

"You're safe now," Christine says. "You're in sickbay."

Frowning, Uhura says, "The captain. You have to warn him! There's something wrong on the ship! Nomad—it's attacking people!"

"Calm down," McCoy says, brandishing a hypo and pressing it gently against Uhura's neck. "The captain knows all about Nomad. He's got things under control."

From the corner of her eye Christine sees McCoy lift one brow—a measure of his skepticism. She doesn't know all the details, of course, but like everyone else she felt the ship shuddering when Nomad increased the warp drive efficiency. And of course, Spock had hurried out of Sickbay a few moments ago, saying that he was on his way to the brig to make sure Nomad was secure.

Not that he was lying, but she sensed he wasn't exactly telling the truth, either. He had been distinctly uncomfortable in the mind meld, breaking away abruptly—not that she didn't have as much or more reason to be embarrassed. She, after all, was the one who had been open about her feelings, had risked sharing them with someone who made it clear time and again that he did not return them—

"You were trying to tell me something," Uhura says, squinting up at Christine.

"That's not important right now," Christine says, placing her hand on Uhura's arm.

"It was like a dream," Uhura says, her eyes unfocused, her brow wrinkled with the effort of remembering. "I saw the captain, and _you_, Dr. McCoy. And Christine, I knew you were with me part of the time. But I could hear voices of people I didn't know…"

Christine darts a glance at the doctor. With a flick of his wrist, he motions to her to step to the side.

"Keep her talking if you can," he says quietly. "The more associations she makes, the better. I'm going to go plug these readings into the lab computer."

No bigger than a saltshaker, the medical scanner is designed for mobility. Reading the information on the small screen is a bother, one the doctor famously refuses to do. Christine nods and steps back to the biobed.

"Do you want to sit up?" she asks, but Uhura shakes her head.

"I feel so tired, like I've been running all day."

"Me, too," Christine says, smiling. Looking around, she locates a chair near one of the prep tables and quickly pulls it up to Uhura's bed. With an audible _oomph_, she sits down.

Any other time Uhura would have commented, teasing Christine about a lack of stamina, perhaps. That she doesn't is disheartening. _A sign of definite brain trauma? A hint of a personality change as a result?_

"Are you thirsty? Or hungry? I could fix you a light meal."

"You were trying to tell me something."

"I asked you if you were hungry."

"No," Uhura says, blinking several times, "earlier. Something about Commander Spock—"

"You know who Mr. Spock is, right? You remember him?"

"Of course. He's—"

Her face screws up and she falters.

"He was my xenolinguistics instructor at the Academy. My junior year. And then—"

Uhura closes her eyes and for a moment Christine is sure that she has fallen asleep. She's just about to get up from her chair when Uhura opens her eyes suddenly and says, "You told him that you care about him, didn't you?"

Feeling her face flush, Christine weighs whether to be evasive or dishonest. Not that she's above telling a lie when she needs to, but Uhura is a friend. Lying feels wrong.

"I did," she says. "I'll tell you all about it, when you're feeling better. Right now I think you need something to eat. Do you think you could manage some soup? I still have some soup from lunch. Chicken noodle. How's that sound?"

Uhura gives a small nod and Christine stands up, straightening the blanket where it's rucked up and scooting the chair out of the way.

"Give me a couple of minutes," she says over her shoulder as she heads into the main reception area of sickbay.

She starts toward the food storage unit on the far counter. To her left a whirring noise draws her attention. _Nomad, floating several feet from the ground._

Too startled to react, Christine stops abruptly in her tracks. Nomad's lights are blinking in a regular pattern, its antenna bent toward the computer on the desk. A flicker of the monitor jerks her into motion.

"What are you doing?" she asks, not waiting for an answer. On the computer screen she can see a photograph of the captain, and underneath, what appears to be his data file. "Get away from there!"

She reaches out to toggle the computer monitor off, but as she does, a flash of light explodes all around her.

"No!" she manages to shout, but then speech and standing and even keeping her eyes open become too difficult and she lets herself slip down into the dark.

X X

"Captain Kirk to Sickbay! Emergency!"

McCoy's voice echoes in the corridor over the intercom. Already on their way to Sickbay, Captain Kirk and Spock rush around the corner and start through the door. The door, however, stays closed, much to the captain's surprise and dismay.

"Manual override," he says, and Spock's fingers play over the control panel on the wall. _Nothing._

"No response," Spock says, the barest hint of frustration in his voice.

And then with a swish the doors open and Nomad looms up.

"Nomad," Kirk says, but Nomad floats past him into the corridor. "Nomad! Stop! Stop!"

Short of physically rushing the probe, Kirk realizes he has no way to make it comply. Glancing into Sickbay, he sees McCoy on the floor, Nurse Chapel in his arms.

"She alright?" Kirk says as he hurries in, Spock right behind him.

"I think so," McCoy says, slipping his arm around Nurse Chapel's waist. Kirk steps up and takes her other arm and together they lift her from the floor and into a chair. "Looks like some kind of shock."

"What happened?"

"Nomad examined the personnel files and the medical history. She tried to stop it." McCoy glances down at Nurse Chapel.

"Whose history?" Kirk says, already suspecting the answer.

"Yours."

Kirk takes a breath.

"Since it specifically examined your history," Spock says, "I suggest it has completed its re-evaluation."

"And found that its creator is as imperfect as all the other biological units," Kirk finishes for him.

It's no surprise. Ever since he slipped up and told Nomad that he was a biological unit, Kirk has waited for just this kind of fallout. He licks his lips.

The intercom whistles—Scotty calling for his attention.

"Kirk here," he says into the nearest transceiver.

"Life support systems are out all over the ship," Scotty says, his voice biting and terse. "Manual override has been blocked. Source—engineering."

"Nomad," Kirk says, and Spock nods. "Undoubtedly."

"Jim," McCoy says, alarmed, "with all the systems out, we'll only have enough air and heat for—"

Most of the time Kirk values what Bones has to say—how he adds an element of heart and concern to the conversations among the bridge officers. Right now isn't one of those times. Kirk cuts him off.

"Scotty, get some antigravs and meet me in engineering."

He exits Sickbay and bypasses the turbolift, heading instead to the Jeffries tube that comes out closest to engineering.

"Go get security," he says to Spock as he takes a step onto the footrest of the tube. Careful not to lean into the wiring on the other side, Kirk goes hand over hand until he is on the deck. The engineering doors part as he approaches.

"Nomad, stop what you're doing. Effect repairs on the life support systems."

Nomad floats in the center of the room, apparently oblivious to him—or more likely, consciously ignoring him. Again Kirk debates whether or not to physically tackle the probe. It might simply shock him, as it had Nurse Chapel, or it might kill him the way it eliminated the guards. Making a decision, Kirk heads toward the engineering catwalk instead.

"Stop," Nomad intones. Slowly Kirk swivels on the stairs.

"You're programmed to obey the orders of your creator," he says, but Nomad doesn't pause before replying.

"I am programmed to destroy those lifeforms which are imperfect."

As it talks its lights flash, yellow and red and white, as if trying to emphasize its words. "These alterations will do so without destroying the vessel which surrounds them. It, too, is imperfect, but it can be adjusted."

Not certain if he is more disturbed by Nomad's characterization of humans as imperfect or the _Enterprise_ herself as needing alterations, Kirk steps back down the catwalk stairs and tugs at his shirt, walking to where an engineer is slumped over his station. Feeling for a pulse, Kirk reassures himself that the man is still alive.

"Nomad," he says, moving closer, "I admit that biological units are imperfect, but a biological unit created you."

"I am perfect. I am Nomad."

Time for a gamble. Kirk takes a breath and says, "No, you're not Nomad. You're an alien machine. Your programming tapes have been altered."

"You are in error!"

_An emotional response from a machine?_ Nomad sounds peeved. Or distraught. Defensive.

"You are a biological unit. You are imperfect," it adds.

Taking a step away, Kirk stalls. _Where are Spock and Scotty with the antigravs?_

"But I am the creator," he says, and Nomad's tone becomes more agreeable.

"You are the creator."

"I created you?"

Kirk asks as if this is a rhetorical question.

"You are the creator."

"But I admit I am imperfect! How could I have created such a perfect thing as you?"

Kirk holds out his hands as if Nomad can see him, can gauge his question at its worth.

Nomad, however, does not sound particularly nonplussed.

"Answer unknown. I shall analyze."

Finally, Spock arrives carrying the antigravs. Scotty and two security officers follow him into engineering. With a quick wave of his hand, Kirk motions to them to wait.

"Analysis complete. Insufficient data to resolve problem," Nomad says. "But my programming is whole. My purpose remains. I am Nomad. I am perfect. That which is imperfect must be sterilized."

Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, Kirk says, "Then you will continue to destroy that which thinks and lives…and is imperfect."

"I shall continue," Nomad says, its voice mechanical and strident. "I shall continue to launch point Earth. I shall sterilize."

Kirk sees an expression of horror cross Scotty's face.

"You _must_ sterilize," Kirk says, and Scotty gives a visible flinch, "in case of error."

"Error," Nomad says, "is inconsistent with my prime function. Sterilization is correction."

Lifting his hand like a lecturing professor, Kirk says, "Everything that is in error must be sterilized."

"There are no exceptions," Nomad agrees.

"Nomad," Kirk says slowly, "I made an error in creating you."

"The creation of perfection is no error."

"I did not create perfection. I created error."

"Your data is faulty. I am Nomad. I am perfect."

This said more rapidly, as if to convince itself. Making sure not to catch Spock's eye, Kirk plays his final logic card.

"I am the Kirk, the creator?"

"You are the creator."

"You're wrong!" Kirk says, turning to look closely at Nomad. "Jackson Roykirk, your creator, is dead. You have mistaken me for him. You are in error! You did not discover your mistake. You have made two errors. You are flawed and imperfect."

Nomad's lights dim and it dips slightly. Kirk continues.

"And you have not corrected by sterilization. You have made three errors!"

"Error! Error! Error! Examine!"

Nomad's voice is pitched an octave higher, something that under different circumstances would have been comical.

"You're flawed," Kirk says, circling around the probe, "and imperfect! Execute your prime function!"

"I shall…analyze." Nomad begins to shimmy and blink erratically. "Error. Analyze! Error!"

Darting forward, Kirk takes one of the antigravs from Scotty and says to Spock, "Now! Get those antigravs on!"

"Examine!" Nomad intones as Kirk and Spock snap the antigravs in place. No shock, no blinding lights. Instead, Nomad is preoccupied. "Error! Error!"

"We've got to get rid of it while it's trying to think!" Kirk says.

Giving him what Kirk has come to recognize as a Vulcan eye roll, Spock says, "Your logic is impeccable, Captain. We are in grave danger."

The antigravs finally in place, Kirk runs forward, Spock on the other side of the probe.

"Scotty!" the captain calls, and they head to the transporter room at the end of the corridor.

"Error! Error!" Nomad says, slower and less coherently. "Error! Must sterilize!"

"Scotty," Kirk says and he sets Nomad on a pad, "set the mark for deep space. Wide dispersal."

"Aye, sir," Scotty says as he scoots behind the transporter station.

"Faulty!" Nomad keens. "Faulty!"

"Ready, sir?"

Kirk holds up his hand and Scotty pauses, his hands hovering over the controls.

"Nomad! You are imperfect! Exercise your prime function!"

"Faulty! Faulty! Must sterilize!"

"Now!" Kirk says.

"Energizing," Scotty says, and Nomad sparkles and disappears. Moving closer to Spock's scanner in the corner of the room, Kirk sees a blinding flash of light as Nomad destroys itself.

**A/N: Well, one problem down. One to go! Uhura's not quite up to speed yet! Thanks for staying tuned to find out what happens next. And thanks for letting me know what you think so far. You keep me going!**


	7. Education

**Chapter Seven: Education**

**Disclaimer: No money made here, sadly.**

Unlike most areas of the _Enterprise_, Lt. Uhura's quarters are agreeably warm. Or almost. A few degrees higher and Spock would have been comfortable, something that's rare on the ship.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Scott looks uncomfortable in the heat, his brow visibly flushed, the back of his shirt damp. In one hand he holds a large magnetic spanner, part of the toolkit he's been using to install a new monitor on the computer on Lt. Uhura's desk. Standing behind him, Spock notices a single drop of sweat trickle down the engineer's neck.

Although Spock had initially been skeptical about the plan to move Lt. Uhura from Sickbay to her quarters, he can see the benefits now that she is here. Here she has more control over the temperature, for one. The familiar surroundings—her walls decorated with artifacts from home, her own bed with the multi-colored kente-cloth quilt—might speed up the process of helping her recover her memories.

Once Mr. Scott finishes with the variable-speed induction monitor for her computer, Spock can install a re-education program that uses biofeedback from the user's brain scans, speeding up or slowing down or even looping again through material as it is absorbed. Such programs are still experimental—the material presented swifter than the human eye can distinguish—though Spock has been in contact with two researchers who have found them useful in retraining people with severe brain trauma.

Not that the lieutenant's brain trauma is exactly comparable. For one, Spock feels a high degree of certainty that her current difficulties are not permanent. Dr. McCoy hasn't indicated that they are, nor has Spock gathered in the mind melds any sense that Lt. Uhura is somehow beyond recovery.

In fact, the experimental retraining program seems to be a good fit for her. She was an exceptional student in his xenolinguistics seminar at the Academy, and since serving with her on the _Enterprise_, Spock has witnessed numerous occasions where she was willing and able to tackle difficult new learning with a grace that he appreciates. The way Starfleet hands down new communications protocols without warning every two months or so, for instance—he's never heard the lieutenant complain.

"There, lass," Mr. Scott says, straightening up and wincing, his hand darting to the small of his back. "Try that."

"Are you okay?"

"Aye, just that old war wound."

Spock feels as baffled as the lieutenant appears. Wearing a loose purple caftan, she slips into the chair at her desk, her brow wrinkled.

"War wound?"

"From the semi-finals. Senior year."

She darts a glance toward Spock but he can't offer any clarification. Her face goes cloudy and Mr. Scott says, "Oh, aye. You might have a bit of trouble remembering. We were on the same Parrises Squares team. My back went out during the semi-finals—daft the way I sprained it like that. Cost us the tournament."

"We were on the team…together?"

"You played that game with a sore ankle, too. Still ended up the high scorer, though."

His tone is what Spock recognizes as jovial, cajoling, the way human adults often talk to distressed children or animals to gentle them. Rather than being cheered, however, the lieutenant abruptly puts her hands on her face and makes a strangled sob.

"I'm never going to get all the pieces back, am I?"

Setting his spanner on the desk, Mr. Scott puts his hands on Lt. Uhura's shoulders in a way that is a paradox of intimacy and formality. In his side Spock feels an unfamiliar pang.

"Oh, no, lassie," the engineer croons softly, reminding Spock of the way his mother sometimes tried to soothe him when he was very small. "You must be patient. Mr. Spock says this program he's found will speed things right up."

"But it can't give me back my memories!"

The lieutenant's agitation is clear in her face, her posture.

"You're wrong there," Mr. Scott says, looking from the lieutenant to Spock, his expression obviously signaling some mystifying message. "Isn't that right, sir?"

With a start, Spock realizes that Mr. Scott is asking him to corroborate misinformation or a deliberate lie. An illogical request, either way.

"The lieutenant is not wrong," Spock says. "The program can only help her acquire information already stored in the data base. Her personal memories will not be affected."

Again Mr. Scott gives him what appears to be a meaningful look—a slight frown, an almost imperceptible shake of his head. He's attempting to communicate something, though Spock cannot parse the meaning.

"But she _can_ get her memories back, right?"

"The mind melds have opened up many of the synaptic pathways," Spock says. "However, unless we can trigger a major synaptic cascade, some memories will continue to be unavailable."

Surely Mr. Scott is already aware of this and needs no reminding—unless his purpose is something else. Spock starts to ask him but another stifled cry from Lt. Uhura stops him. Before he can react, Mr. Scott kneels down in front of her and grips her hands, turning her toward him so that they are facing each other.

"Uhura," he says with an intensity in his voice that echoes the look on his face, "we aren't going to settle for anything but a full recovery. Whatever it takes, we're going to do it. You have to believe me."

The scene is so openly emotional, so fraught with promise and expectation that Spock looks away. He's never considered before what sort of relationship the chief engineer and Lt. Uhura might have. They've spoken in public about being cadets together at the Academy, mentioning more than once the difficulty they had with a particular professor, regaling the crew in the rec room with stories of their Parrises Squares team, alluding to a prank that almost garnered Mr. Scott an academic suspension.

Activities that are more than the sum of their parts, perhaps? Spock turns back and lets his gaze drift to their joined hands. The touch of friends, or something more? He presses his palm to his side, willing the ache there to ease.

"But so much is missing, Scotty," Lt. Uhura says, a tear arcing down her cheek. "How can I ever get it all back?"

She looks up at Spock then, as if she is asking him a question.

And suddenly he knows that she is—or more precisely, that she's making a request.

"You wish to have Mr. Scott help you access your shared memories," he says, a statement of fact, and she nods.

"If we were such good friends," she says, turning back to Mr. Scott, "if we _are_ such good friends, then I want to know that. Really know that for myself—not just have someone tell me it's true."

"You mean," Mr. Scott says, comprehension dawning in his face, "that you want me to do a mind meld with you? And with Mr. Spock?" His frown suggests he is less than eager, but his words belie that. "When do we start?"

"Are you certain you are willing?" Spock says, but Mr. Scott scoffs loudly, letting go of the lieutenant's hands and coming to his feet.

"Of course I'm willing," he says. "I'd do anything for Uhura."

Kind words—generous words. Spock hears the affection in them and resolves to meditate tonight on why he finds them so disquieting.

X X

"Gie me a wee bit more, if you don't mind."

Nyota glanced at the cadet at her elbow—an older student, short and sallow, his hair dark and wispy with ginger highlights. A Scotsman, one who held up his glass and watched as she topped up his beer from the keg on the counter.

Playing bartender wasn't Nyota's idea of having fun at a party—but then she was at this party against her will. Or almost against her will. It was, after all, in her dorm room. When her roommate invited some friends who invited their friends, what had started out as a small gathering mushroomed into this—a sprawling, exuberant crowd of cadets drinking and shouting over the loud music, avoiding for a few hours what they all needed to be doing—studying for their winter exams.

An extrovert, Nyota usually enjoyed socializing at parties—but today she was more concerned about Professor Albertson's information theory exam. Although she was comfortable defining the different types of entropy—Hartley, Shannon, Collision, Min—she was less sure about the application portion of the test—showing the practical application using randomness extractors. Parking herself behind the counter, she kept her PADD propped up next to the keg and scrolled through the exam prep.

"Whatcha reading?" the Scottish cadet said, and Nyota grimaced. If she weren't so busy, she would have quizzed him further about his accent. East coast or West? As it was, she didn't have time to entertain someone who was obviously past graduating on time. She'd heard that the Academy allowed some civilians to audit courses as a public relations measure. She wouldn't have been surprised if the man at her elbow was here doing just that.

"I'm getting ready for this math exam," she said, cutting her eyes to her PADD. "Nothing interesting. You wouldn't like it."

"Can I have a look?"

Barely suppressing a sigh, she picked up the PADD and handed it over. Another cadet, a girl from across the hall, wandered up and motioned for a beer and Nyota filled a glass for her. The Scottish cadet was still looking at her PADD and Nyota held out her hand.

"What'd I tell you," she said. "Hard stuff."

"Aye, I see what you mean. I'm too much of a numpty to understand this kind of mathematical engineering. But you! You should have taken the advanced course—saved yourself the time."

A look of surprise flickered across her face—a moment before she realized that the cadet was teasing her. Or telling her off—she wasn't sure which.

"Here," he said, ignoring her outstretched hand and setting the PADD on the counter, his tone cool, his eyes narrowed, "I don't want to keep you any longer."

And then she was sure. He was telling her off.

Nyota prided herself on her friendliness—on her innate tolerance and appreciation for all kinds of people—so she felt a stab of remorse at how unfriendly she sounded, how haughty.

"Wait," she said, darting out her fingers and brushing the cadet's sleeve, "I was rude and I'm sorry. It's just…this _is_ hard for me, and I'm a little stressed about the exam tomorrow."

Something in the cadet's expression softened and he nodded.

"And you have a room full of strangers keeping you from studying."

"Yes!" She laughed, hoping she sounded more amused than annoyed.

"Come on, then," he said, crooking an elbow.

"But—" She dipped her chin toward the keg and he said, "It's self-service for the rest of the evening. Come on."

They made their way across the crowded room, the cadet lifting his glass over his head, Nyota following in his wake.

"Where are we going?" she asked when they got out into the corridor.

"Somewhere quiet," he said, heading to the lift around the corner. Pressing the call button with his thumb, he added, "My room is two flights up. It's empty. You can study there."

At that she balked, stepping back.

"Oh, I don't think so," she said. "I don't know you. I don't even know your name."

"Montgomery Scott," he said, taking a sip of his beer. "Scotty to my friends. And I have an exam to study for, too. My roommate gangpressed me into coming with him to the party. That wasn't my idea."

The lift arrived, interrupting what he clearly intended as a comic recitation.

"Look," he said, one hand holding the lift door open, "if you don't feel comfortable, we'll pull some chairs out into the hall and work there. But I have an astrodynamics textbook to review before 1400 tomorrow and I need to get started."

It wasn't often that Nyota trusted someone quickly or implicitly, but Scotty was so transparent, such a gentleman, that she found herself stepping into the lift with him. She wasn't worried about any physical misbehavior—her self-defense training had been extensive, and the cadets accepted to the Academy were thoroughly screened—but she had a sense—dim and unvoiced and hurriedly squashed—that Scotty was someone she could fall for—and that alarmed her. She simply didn't have time to get involved with anyone.

Even so—

That first study session in his room turned into many more, comfortable times of sharing a pot of tea and conversation before striking out on their own, Nyota curling up in an old tatty sofa Scotty had hauled in against dorm regulations, he sitting in the straight-backed wooden chair, hunched over stacks of PADDS and flimplasts spread across the table.

They talked mostly about what they were studying, finding that their interests intersected in unusual ways—engineering parlance and communications lingo swapped and learned and eventually replaced in an avalanche of new material.

"Ayr or Edinburgh?" she asked early in their friendship, and he almost blanched.

"Ach, lass!" he said, deliberately exaggerating his brogue. "Aberdeen born and bred. I thought you were a communications major. You cannae make that kind of error and keep your reputation for a good ear. Better brush up on your Terran accents before you think about heading out into space."

And so she had—not that Scotty had actually been offended or even serious in his advice, but he was right. If she wanted to be the best at xenolinguistics, she first had to be the best at Terran languages in all their permutations.

At some level she was aware that she had what he would have called _a wee bit of a crush_—a peculiar happiness when she saw him, a wistfulness about what they were _not_ with each other. When he invited her to join the Parrises Squares tryouts, she did so because it seemed important to him. When she asked him to teach her to play the bagpipes, he looked floored, as if she had asked him to perform some unheard of miracle. After her first lesson, she decided he might have a point.

"I'm not sure I can get the hang of this," she said, the heavy instrument on her lap, a rueful frown on her face. "I could get the same effect from beating a sick cow."

"To the unappreciative," he quipped, "that describes the sound of every bagpipe."

If another world—or perhaps if they were different people in this one—they would have been lovers. Once after a particularly grueling physical workout at the gym they cooled off by walking across the commons and sat on the top seats of the outdoor amphitheater, watching the twilight mist rolling into the bay and obscuring the Golden Gate Bridge.

"It's always so beautiful," she said, leaning into Scotty's shoulder. She felt him shift his posture and she lifted her eyes, startled at the intensity of his gaze, at how close his face was to hers. Suddenly she was sure that he was going to kiss her.

When he didn't she was surprised and disappointed—and relieved. Then the moment passed and he sat back, looking away.

"It _is_ beautiful," he said, a note of sadness in his voice.

Their last year before graduation they saw less of each other—Scotty consumed with his senior thesis_—"I know it's crazy, Uhura, but I really do think I can make transwarp beaming work"—_and she was swamped—truly swamped for the first time since she'd been at the Academy—with the work load in Commander Spock's xenolinguistics seminar.

The class was unusual for a seminar—52 students meeting twice a week in one of the large lecture halls in the language building. To her surprise the Commander called on the students by name the first day—a feat both notable and distressing, if only because it kept everyone alert, accountable.

And call on them he did. Frequently. Pointedly. Not knowing an answer was no excuse. Despite what she had heard about Vulcans, Nyota was astonished at how expressive Commander Spock was—how his look could be withering when a cadet gave a weak or incomplete response, how his posture signaled his intentions. How he always canted his head to the left before he dismissed the class at the bell, for instance. How he waited a beat before offering rare praise. She noticed these things.

And complained about them, too, over a hasty meal in the cafeteria with Scotty right before midterms.

"Half the class is failing," she exclaimed over her cooling bowl of soup. "It's impossible to please him. The rubrics are so tough that several students have talked about going to the dean."

Scotty watched her silently as she vented her frustration. By the time he took the last bite of his sandwich, she had finally wound down enough to start her meal.

"You in the half that's failing?"

"What? No!"

"You thinking of sending a note to the dean?"

"No, I—"

"You feel you've been graded unfairly?"

"It's not that he's unfair—"

"Too hard, is he? Not learning anything, are you?"

"What are you saying?"

"You're so used to being at the top of your game that you cannae handle having to struggle to learn something. To catch up. To measure up to someone's standards higher than your own."

She was instantly furious. How dare Scotty talk to her this way—lecture her and scold her like a child. Setting her spoon into her bowl, she stood up and picked up her tray, neither saying anything nor looking back as she walked away.

Her bad mood continued to the next day when she entered the lecture hall and sat in her seat on the front row. As usual, she was early. Only a handful of students were already there, most of them milling about talking to each other. Pulling out her PADD, she heard a lull in the ambient noise—the kind of sudden cessation of sound that sometimes happened in a crowd—and she looked up.

Commander Spock beckoned to her from the aisle.

"Me? You want to see me?" she asked, aware of how stupid she sounded, how caught off guard. But how could she not be? Commander Spock was punctual to a fault, always arriving 30 seconds before the tardy bell and proceeding immediately to the front desk. She knew this because she had noted it, repeatedly.

Yet here he was, his finger crooked in a way that suggested it was not a familiar movement for him—was, in fact, a human gesture he was attempting—and failing—to employ.

"Please," he said, and she flipped down the writing surface of her desk and stood up. Without another word he continued to the front of the room, and after looking around briefly, she followed him.

He stopped at the large desk in the front of the room and deposited his satchel before turning to face her.

"Sir?" she said, and he blinked once as if coming to a decision inside himself before he spoke.

"I believe it is your intention to apply to the Martian telemetry station after graduation," he said without preamble. Now it was her turn to blink. Not that the information was a secret, but she had never shared it directly with him. He had either looked up her record or asked her academic adviser.

"Ye-es," she stammered, and then gathering her breath, she repeated herself. "Yes, I have planned to apply."

"And your other plans?"

"Other plans?"

"If your application is not accepted. If there are no positions available on the Martian station."

Her face flushed. Not getting a job on the station hadn't occurred to her. It was, after all, a popular first posting for communications majors. Before she could say anything, however, Commander Spock continued.

"Have you considered applying for a position on a starship?"

Of its own accord, her mouth fell open.

"Uh, a starship? I assumed I would need at least a year getting experience somewhere else—"

"Most cadets do require additional training," the commander said evenly, "but I believe you have the talent and perseverance to go directly to a ship posting, should you desire."

Of course she desired! Most people went to the Academy and joined Starfleet hoping to serve on a ship some day. She was at a loss for words.

"You may not be aware," Spock said, "that the _Enterprise_ is scheduled for her maiden voyage shortly after graduation in May. You may also be unaware that I have accepted a post as Captain Pike's first officer. If you are interested, I would be willing to give you a recommendation to the communications pool."

She stood nailed to the floor, too stunned to reply, ashamed of her earlier grousing to Scotty about the Commander. Of course Scotty had been right. She saw that now, how her real complaint about the Commander wasn't about Spock at all but was with herself—how she'd gotten used to easy success until this class, that her vanity more than anything else had been wounded by having to double down and persevere in order to succeed.

But now that was paying off, apparently.

"I'll be leaving now," Scotty said behind her and she turned around, startled.

"What are you doing here?" she said, but he was already moving back up the aisle to the door at the back of the room.

"Mind what I told you," he called, "about working hard. You know how. Let the Commander help you."

"What do you mean?" she called, but Scotty was already gone, the room growing blurry. With an effort, she turned around and scanned for Commander Spock.

"Lieutenant," he said slowly, and she felt her mind give a series of little clicks, like tumblers falling into place in a lock.

"This isn't real, is it? I'm starting to remember, aren't I?" she said. "That's why this meld feels different, like watching a single long story."

His image started to fade and she had a moment of panic, as if she had been caught in a strong undertow and was being pulled out to sea.

"Hold on," he said. "I need to show you something first."

**A/N: One more chapter—at least that's the plan. Let me know what you thought of this one. Your comments are my education in how to be a better writer.**


	8. Sins of Omission

**Chapter Eight: Sins of Omission**

**Disclaimer: Don't own much, and certainly nothing here.**

"Special delivery, Commander."

To Spock's surprise, Ensign Uhura stood in the corridor outside his quarters holding a package, something bulky but apparently not too heavy. She hefted it in her arms and prepared to hand it to him when he recoiled reflexively, taking a half-step back.

"Oh!' she said, her eyes widening, an unmistakable expression of dismay flushing her face. "I forgot! I'm sorry, Commander—"

"Please," he said quickly, waving her into the room. He should have had his shields up before answering the door; now he had offended her—or at the very least, made her uncomfortable. His lack of foresight and control were disappointing—the stress of the extra duty in the run up to the _Enterprise_'s launch from Spacedock? Unlikely, though he resolved to meditate on it after his shift.

"When I signed for this I saw that it's marked fragile," the ensign said as she walked in. "The logistics engineer is busy so I volunteered to carry it up. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered you."

The note of apology in her voice made him uneasy, as though he was required to do something that eluded him.

"I am not bothered," he said, partly to reassure her, but also, he realized with a start, because it was true.

He knew Ensign Uhura better than he knew most of the crew members, which was not much at all. Although she had taken his xenolinguistics course at the Academy, he knew little about her personally—except, of course, that she was academically gifted, with a self-discipline that made her stand out in a classroom. When she followed up on his suggestion that she apply for a position in the communications division on the _Enterprise_ he was pleased—not just because he valued her contributions to the ship, but because he felt she would benefit from the experience, that a stint on the Martian telemetry station would be a waste of her time and energy.

"Good!" she said, flashing a smile. "I guess I should warn you that there are several other packages on the way up on the antigrav sled. I didn't want to risk putting this with them."

Again Spock had the sense that some response was required—an acknowledgement of the ensign's offering him information, a recognition that she had gone out of her way to be helpful.

"Thank you," he said. He glanced at his desk and she followed his gaze.

"Here?" she said, and he nodded as she crossed the distance and set the package down. Turning, she gave another smile—a smaller one this time, as if she was hesitant—and said, "Well, I hope it's something interesting." She started toward the door.

_Curiosity killed the cat._

His mother's voice, remembered like a sage—or a prophet.

"From my mother," Spock said, and the ensign stopped and swiveled back. "Her attempt to make the _Enterprise _feel more like home."

The ensign lifted one brow in query and he motioned to the package on the desk.

"It is almost certain to be the family _ka'athyra_," he said. "The size is suggestive. Her usual packages of foodstuffs are much smaller."

It was a statement of fact, nothing more, but the ensign laughed as if he had said something amusing.

"My mother sends me food, too! That must be a universal constant of motherhood."

"Indeed."

For a moment they stood in awkward silence, and then Spock astonished himself by saying, "Would you care to see it?"

Later when he sat cross-legged in front of his _asenoi_ and tried to empty his mind of distractions, he tried to tease apart the reasons for his impulsive behavior, why he invited the ensign to observe him unwrapping what turned out to be, in fact, the ancient _ka'athyra_ that was usually kept in a cabinet in his family home in Shi'Kahr.

"My father is the better musician," he told her as he freed it from the packaging material, deflecting her request that he play something.

"Since I've never heard him," Ensign Uhura said, "I won't be able to judge."

He recognized her comment as humorous—saw what she did next as a punctuation mark to it. Without looking down, she planted herself on the chair at his desk.

_I am ready to listen_, she seemed to say.

He let his fingers flutter over the strings as he tuned the modulator slightly, the atonal scale oddly comforting, reminiscent of hours of music lessons and practice.

When he looked up he caught a glimpse of the ensign's face, her head canted to the side in concentration. _Was she pleased or put off by the sound?_ Even his mother, who claimed to enjoy most types of music_,_ sometimes complained that Vulcan sensibilities set human teeth on edge as far as the _ka'athyra_ was concerned. He let his hand fall to his side.

"Oh, please don't stop!"

"I am keeping you from your duties."

"My shift ended before I came," Ensign Uhura said as she got up from the chair, and too late he realized that she had taken his words as a dismissal. "Thank you, Commander."

For the second time he startled himself by being so uncharacteristically impulsive that only now, in this mind meld with Lieutenant Uhura several years afterwards, is he sorting out the reasons for his behavior back then—

"If you are interested," he had said as Ensign Uhura stepped through the doorway, "I would be willing to give you the fundamentals."

"Sir?"

"If you wish to learn to play the _ka'athyra, _I could teach you."

A flash of teeth, a crinkle of her eyes—and she nodded and said, "I would like that. Very much!"

_So that's how this started, Lieutenant Uhura says, her voice soft and hazy in the meld._

_Yes, he agrees, willing her to understand that he isn't just talking about music lessons._

The scene dissolves and is replaced by the conference room, the captain and the department heads seated around the table.

Feeling a wave of uneasiness, Spock lets her know that this is a year ago, at a discussion about promotions.

"The _Charlestown_ is scheduled to rendezvous with us at 2100," Dr. McCoy says. "I've put Chapel in charge of getting Donnelly aboard. The medical facilities at Starbase 11 have been alerted."

"What about Donnelly? Still no change?"

To a casual observer, the captain appears angry—his forehead creased, his jaw squared—but Spock has served with him long enough to know that if the captain is angry, it is with himself. No matter that Lt. Donnelly being injured during a landing party was no one's fault—the communications officer had slipped and fallen from a narrow rock shelf. The captain blames himself.

"Jim," the doctor says, obviously sharing Spock's perception of the captain's distress, "the medical staff at Starbase 11 know what they're doing. With the mining colony right there, they see all sorts of injuries worse that his—"

"I know that, Bones," the captain says, cutting him off. "But it shouldn't have happened in the first place." Turning to Spock, he says, "Notify Starfleet that Lieutenant Junior Grade Uhura is being given a field promotion to Lieutenant and is being reassigned to the bridge. Set up her training schedule as soon as possible. Now, about the—"

"Captain."

All eyes around the table are on him, and to his horror, Spock realizes that he isn't certain what he will say.

_That over the past year he has come to regret his impulsive offer to teach the ka'athyra to Lt. JG Uhura, not because the time they spend together once a week is unpleasant, but because it is not?_

Sometimes meeting in her quarters, sometimes in his, but most often in a quiet corner of the rec room, they've developed an easy familiarity that troubles him. Once in an unguarded moment as he leaned forward and adjusted her fingers on the strings, he slipped and called her Nyota—a breach of protocol so alarming that he canceled their lessons for a few weeks until he had regained a measure of equanimity.

A promotion will put her at the station beside his on the bridge. The reality that she will be in daily proximity gives him such an instant flush of anticipation that he tamps it down, almost panicked.

"Yes, Mr. Spock? You have an objection?"

"Not an objection, Captain, but a concern. Ms. Uhura is certainly a capable communications officer."

"But? She doesn't merit a promotion?"

Of course she does. If Lieutenant Donnelly hadn't been hurt, she would have been up for promotion in another year—two at the most. Time enough, Spock had thought, for him to quiet the gnawing uncertainty about T'Pring, hopefully formalizing their marriage and putting his worries about that to rest.

And with it, the lingering, aching longing that sometimes disrupts his sleep after one of the _ka'athyra_ lessons—

When he doesn't speak up, Dr. McCoy says, "So what's your concern then? Not every communications officer is going to go fall off a cliff during a landing party, in case you're worried about that."

The doctor's comment catches him completely by surprise. For a moment he puzzles over it—the hint of sarcasm, the implied paternalism, and more, the suggestion that Spock's feelings are on display.

"Don't give me that look," the doctor says. "I was just asking."

Taking a breath, Spock says, "I have no objections, Captain. I will send the promotion notice immediately."

_Get it off your chest_, his mother sometimes encouraged him when she wanted him to divulge his private musings. _You'll feel better if you stop trying to hide things from me_.

For the most part that was true. Keeping secrets from his mother had involved spending a great deal of energy—passively keeping his shields in place as well as actively diverting her attention when she became too inquisitive.

Nevertheless, _this _revelation—that he had spoken out against the lieutenant's promotion—is something he has not wanted to tell, has not wanted her to know. The room for misunderstanding is too great. Lt. Uhura may take it for what humans call _a vote of no confidence_ about her abilities. Or worse, she will see what it really is—an attempted dodge, a testament to how drawn to her he is, how difficult it is to see her as nothing more than a competent officer.

_He feels her puzzlement through the meld, her barely articulated, "This is what you wanted me to see?"_

Instead of answering, he pulls them both forward in time to a few months ago. The scene is the corridor outside her quarters, the dimmed lights and sparse foot traffic of delta shift when two-thirds of the crew are off duty. She is, too—possibly, _probably_—asleep.

He stands in front of her door like a sleepwalker, struggling not to press the chime.

If he could talk to her for a moment, he might be able to feel settled enough to sleep—or failing that, meditate until he can think clearly again.

A noise from around the corner snaps him out of his reverie. Lowering his hand, he sees a tremor that echoes the shakiness he feels inside. As a security officer comes into view, Spock catches his eye, nods, and continues down the hall as if he had never paused.

Heading to the turbolift, he feels relief and disappointment—but by the time he reaches his own quarters he is also afraid.

_What had he been thinking, going to her quarters that way? _

An imagined image of her opening her door and inviting him in, slipping her arms around him and raising her face to his—

And suddenly he knows—this is how it starts. For so long he has assumed he would be immune, that his dual heritage would protect him from the frenzy of _pon farr_.

His heart hammers in his side as he cancels his duties for the next three days, as he sets up a _do not disturb_ quarantine on his quarters and encrypts the locks so that he can't leave until he engages a password, trusting that he will remember it after the fever passes. The memory of appearing at Lt. Uhura's door rattles him so thoroughly that he considers confiding in the doctor and asking to be confined to sickbay—or the brig.

But instead he hunkers down and waits. Not surprisingly, he is soon flushed and nauseated—yet strangely restless with difficulty focusing. To distract himself he flips through old vids and photos of T'Pring, hoping to sense her in his mind. She's never been a particularly strong presence—not the way he suspects his mother and father are for each other. If he ever sensed her at all, it was as more of an irritation, her barely concealed skepticism about their union, about him, always there, like a pebble in his shoe.

Still, he reaches out for her now, needing her to steady him.

_Nothing._

No wonder he had drifted, half unconscious, to Lt. Uhura's quarters.

He hadn't counted on Christine Chapel using her medical override to get into his quarters and check on him. Through a haze he watches her advancing into his room, a tray in her hands, saying something about _plomeek_ soup.

After that he remembers little until he is standing in front of T'Pau, surrounded by the ancient stones of his family's place of _koon-ut-kalifee_, T'Pring and Stonn in the distance.

Dr. McCoy standing over the captain—

At that memory Spock stumbles and lets his mind go dark.

_I understand, Uhura says through the meld. You don't need to live that again._

To his astonishment the weight in his side eases as she speaks, as if his mother is right after all, that _getting it off his chest_ lessens the burden.

_My turn, _she says. The edge of his awareness brightens and flares as she rides forward on a synaptic cascade, her memories tumbling into place like falling dominoes. _This is what I remember_, she says as she tugs him forward.

A whirlwind of color and sound—snippets of images of the Academy and the _Enterprise_—his xenolinguistics seminar, her station on the bridge, talking with crew members in the rec room.

_You are recovering what was lost, _he tells her. _Your memories are returning._ _The meld is working._

His presence is no longer essential. As he prepares to break the meld, she calls out. _No! These are not my memories. _

They _are_, of course, and he starts to tell her so, but before he can, she says, _You'll see what I mean._ _Come with me._

Curiosity killed the cat? He surrenders gently to her command, hearing her silvery laughter like a distant echo.

_This is the way I remember things_, she says, and again he experiences the dizzying assault of noise and color, but this time he is also buffeted by something else—waves and washes of emotions—happiness and fear and enchantment and worry, tied to the images like lead weights, pulling him down, down into the memories, like sinking into the sea…

The nervousness she felt the first time his xenolinguistics seminar met, her anxiety rising as she struggled to read his expressions, his inflections.

Her relief when she began to parse the meaning of a raised eyebrow, of a stony silence, of the calculated pause before calling on an unprepared student. The way his unblinking stare signaled his undivided attention and not arrogance or judgment as other students assumed.

And later when she joined the crew—her excitement and pleasure with everything on the ship, her gentle impatience with anyone whose enthusiasm flagged, the camaraderie that felt like family at times, the eagerness to test and prove herself.

Negative emotions, too—illustrated in scenes that winked past. Her dismay when Lt. Tomlinson was killed on his wedding day, Nyota unable to think of a single comforting word in any language to say to the bride.

Her irritation and physical discomfort when her ankle gave way during routine PT, forcing her to miss three days of duty.

Her uneasiness and sorrow as Christine Chapel sat with her in the mess hall, hands cupped around a cooling cup of tea, saying, "I know it's ridiculous, but I can't stop thinking about him."

Unnamed and conflicting emotions as well—Lt. Donnelly's injury and Nyota's subsequent promotion conjuring such an amalgam of grief and guilt and pride and satisfaction that even now the closest word is _wonder_.

The boring comfort of routines and drills and habits. The fear that was equal parts terror and determination when the ship was under attack or facing a crisis.

The shock she felt the first time Spock touched her—his fingers accidentally brushing hers when she moved too swiftly to take the _ka'athyra_ from his hand, her body going hot and damp with an arousal that she realized was not just her own—

Her resolve not to act on her feelings—the torment and the delight—

Suddenly she is weary beyond measure, her energy faltering.

_Rest now_, he says, and she lets go and her attention disperses like fog, like dust motes in the sunlight. She's almost asleep when she rouses herself enough to thank him—_For coming back for me_, she says._ For making me whole._

X X X

The hover bus is so crowded that Spock hesitates before the automatic door, rethinking his decision to board it. Another bus will be along in 11.45 minutes. There is, however, no guarantee that the next bus, nor the one after that, will be less crowded. Repressing a sigh, he steps up and makes his way down the aisle to one of the few unoccupied seats.

The human woman he sits next to looks as uncomfortable as he feels. After darting an uneasy glance at him, she turns her face away, suddenly interested in the scenery outside.

_The old hurt, the one he recalls from his own universe._

Settling back in his seat, he watches the streets of San Francisco slip past. Oddly familiar and yet not—the terrain as he recalls, and many of the older buildings—but some differences catch him up short every time he sees them.

Starfleet Academy, for instance, sprawled along the Presidio on the city side of the bay. In his universe, in his timeline, the Academy and Starfleet headquarters sprang up on the site of old Fort Baker on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge, Sausalito just over the ridge. Why the two universes evolved differently he'll never know—nor do such questions really interest him. This is his world now, even if he feels like an interloper.

No use to dwell on what he has lost—his world, everyone he knew, even his name—at least not consciously. His infrequent dreams are troubled enough.

The ride out to Old Fort Point is longer than he anticipates, an overturned flitter holding up traffic at the end of Marine Boulevard. When the driver finally manages to navigate an alternate route around the accident, the sun is touching the top of the hills on the other side of the bay. If the fog hasn't already started rolling in near the bridge, it will soon.

Sure enough, when Spock exits at Old Fort Point the top of the Golden Gate Bridge is partially obscured, and to his surprise, he feels a flicker of disappointment. From this angle the bridge appears to be a series of red arches leaping over the water—or they would if the mist weren't impeding his vision.

Even so, the view gives him comfort. At one time he would have been ashamed to admit that, but no more.

In the past four months—since the day he slipped through the black hole and watched his world die—he has divided his time between Earth and New Vulcan, working with Starfleet and the Vulcan survivors to get the colony established—or at least off to a stable beginning. Each time that he visits San Francisco he comes here, to Old Fort Point, drawn to the technological simplicity of the bridge, to the power of the water coursing through the narrowed inlet of the bay. As he walks the shoreline he does a sort of meditation, emptying his mind and bracing himself against the cold wind. When he returns to the housing at the Academy grounds he feels depleted and still.

Today, however, as the sun sinks behind the horizon, his mind is racing, his heart thrumming loudly in his side. The view offers little solace. The chilly wind is more miserable than cleansing.

Of course he knows why. Earlier in the afternoon he had been at Starfleet headquarters when he rounded a corner and saw his young counterpart, the Spock who serves now with Jim Kirk on the _Enterprise_, walking ahead of him, his arms tucked behind his back, one wrist clasped around the other in such an uncanny resemblance of himself that he had almost stumbled in surprise.

Even the cant of young Spock's head is familiar, the way he angles his chin down and over, as if this helps him listen more attentively to the person walking at his side.

For a moment Spock—the one whose Jim Kirk was long ago buried, whose _Enterprise_ disintegrated in a fiery blaze over a dying planet in another universe—starts to call out, but something gives him pause.

_The woman._ Young and lithe, she wears a red uniform, her long dark hair pulled up into a ponytail, her boots making a soft tattoo on the floor. Her face is tipped up and she is speaking, though from here her words are almost undecipherable. With a start, Spock—or Selek, as he calls himself in this timeline—realizes that he is straining to hear what she is saying. _An interloper, indeed._ Quickly he turns around and heads in the other direction.

But not before he overhears part of the couple's conversation. Nothing personal. Nothing private. A comment about a duty roster—she needed some point of clarification and Spock was offering it.

It is not what he heard that keeps him from being able to meditate later along Old Fort Point but what he saw—a glimpse so swift, so half in shadow that if he hadn't been looking for it, he would have missed it—Nyota Uhura's face shining with such tenderness that she seemed lit from within; Spock's obvious delight with her tricked out in the way he inclined his body slightly in her direction, his eyes following her like someone unable to look away.

And that, too, Selek recognizes as his own.

He presses his hand to his side and slows his breathing.

It is a day for surprises. No sooner is he back in town for the evening briefing with the other Vulcans than he sees that Sarek has joined them. Again he almost stumbles, but this time his misstep doesn't go unnoticed. Sarek turns and watches him approach.

As he always does in the presence of Sarek, Selek feels a keen disconnect, not only between the two of them, but within himself. How odd it is to stand here next to a man who appears to be his father, feeling nothing—no tendrils of a family bond, no shared history. They have spoken together in private only once—shortly after the _Enterprise_ limped back to Spacedock after the Battle of Vulcan.

"I grieve with thee," Selek had said then, and Sarek let a glimmer of his anguish show—a brief nod of his head, his brow furrowed.

"All of Vulcan grieves," Sarek said, and Selek felt dismissed, as if his comment had been examined and been found wanting.

Since then they have occasionally been at the same gathering or seen each other in passing. Each time Selek considers seeking Sarek out—offering to share stories of the father he knew, of the son he was—but never giving in to that impulse.

"I saw your son earlier today," Selek says now by way of greeting. Sarek inclines his head briefly, his eyes dark and impenetrable. "At Starfleet headquarters. The _Enterprise_ must be here for maintenance."

For a moment Sarek's expression threatens to cloud over.

"So I have been told," he says. His face resets to neutral—a skill Selek has never fully mastered. His human heritage, no doubt. He is long past regretting it.

They are in a small alcove outside one of the meeting rooms at the Vulcan embassy—Sarek dressed in traditional Vulcan robes, Selek in Terran civilian clothes. A human worker starts down the hallway and both Sarek and Selek fall silent until she passes. Then Selek continues.

"He was with one of the crew members. A young woman—"

"The communications officer," Sarek says in agreement. "I met her. After—Vulcan—when the ship brought us here. I spoke to her in his quarters. They were—together."

Such hesitation is not characteristic of Sarek—at least not the Sarek he knew.

"They are important to each other," Selek says, a bald fact stated as such. He waits to see if Sarek will contradict it.

"That is not my concern," Sarek answers. "And at some point in the future, it will not be Spock's concern either."

"Explain."

"Although he chooses to remain in Starfleet for now," Sarek says, "Spock 's responsibility is to the Vulcan people."

"Service in Starfleet _is_ a way of serving the Vulcan people," Selek replies. He struggles to keep his tone even, not to show the old irritation he often felt when debating _his _Sarek.

"But not the most important way," Sarek says without hesitation. "Spock needs to come home—to the colony—to begin a family. Otherwise there will be no future for Vulcan."

"And he agrees? He has told you that?"

Sarek lifts one eyebrow.

"Spock keeps his own counsel," he says dryly. "He was always much more inclined to share his thoughts with his mother than with me."

The mention of Amanda casts a pall on the conversation, steers it into darker waters. With a shrug, Sarek adds, this time with a note of sadness in his voice, "Whether or not he agrees, he will come home, sooner or later."

He lifts his eyes and starts to turn away.

Taking a step after him, Selek calls out.

"Do not ask this of him."

Sarek stops and turns back to face him.

"Duty requires it."

"Does it?" Selek says. "What about Spock's duty to himself? You would ask him to give up his career, his place where he finds fulfillment and meaning?"

"Nothing can be more meaningful than preserving a people."

"And his companions? People who accept him the way he has never felt accepted before? You would ask him to give them up?"

"There will be other companions. On the colony. People who share his task to rebuild our world."

Selek squares his shoulders and takes another step forward.

"And the woman he has chosen? You will ask him live his life without her?"

Finally Sarek shows a crack in his equanimity, giving himself away with a tiny tremor in his hand, like brushing away a fly. Selek presses his advantage.

"You would ask him to face the same loss that you suffer? Is that what you want for your son?"

Blinking, Sarek looks away for a moment.

"He is young. His…emotional attachment…is new. He will recover."

"No," Selek says. "No, he will not."

How to tell this man who both is and is not his father that he speaks from experience, that his logic is grounded in the kind of regret that comes from not doing something, from not valuing something, from letting someone slip away? Sins of omission, his mother called them. The worst kinds of regrets.

"If you separate them," he says, more forcefully this time, "Spock will not recover. Just as you will not recover. He is, after all, your son, too—and is like you in more ways than you know."

That's all he has to say. All he _can_ say. Either Sarek will listen or he won't. Will ask Spock to leave Starfleet, to leave _her_, or he won't.

And even if he does ask, Spock might follow his heart instead. Might, in this universe, celebrate his emotions and accept the possibility of happiness, in a way Selek never could.

He hopes so. The odds are high. In this universe Spock has already taken many chances to pursue a relationship with Nyota Uhura—chances that on the surface seem daring and foolhardy but in the end have sustained him and altered him in such a fundamental way that even now Selek finds their differences more fascinating—more _wondrous_—than their similarities. Surely this young Spock will choose his own course, no matter what his father says, what the Vulcan Council advises.

If this Nyota Uhura is like the one he knew long ago—like the one who still inhabits his dreams—Spock will never give her up.

"Live long," Selek says, his hand raised in the _ta'al_, "and prosper."

Slowly Sarek returns the gesture before continuing down the hallway.

Later, Selek walks across the dark Academy commons and looks up at the night sky. The constellations are the ones he remembers, are the ones sailors still navigate by, as if the universe in all its possibilities refuses to be moved too far. Some things do not change, he muses. Some things must.

Those two thoughts lighten his step, like a reader turning the last page of a familiar novel and discovering, to his astonishment, that the ending is a happy one after all.

**A/N: Thus this little story comes to an end. I apologize that this chapter was so long…I started to divide it into two, but I felt the two halves needed to be read together….I hope that wasn't a miscalculation and I ended up losing readers along the way! **

**Thanks to everyone who has read and reviewed! When I drifted into TOS land after writing mostly Star Trek 2009 fiction, I was astonished at the response. You have been terrifically supportive…leaving helpful, encouraging notes and reviews. Thank you so much!**

**I've now written two scenes where Spock receives his ka'athyra in the mail—one in this chapter, and one in one of my ST 2009 stories, "What We Think We Know." While they have some similarities, they have more differences—mostly because the two timelines have sent Spock into two different trajectories—an idea I find fun to explore in fiction. If you are interested in that ride home from The Battle of Vulcan where Sarek sees Nyota in Spock's quarters, that's in "Truth and Lies."  
**

**I'm not sure where my muse will take me next. In the meantime, if you haven't read my ST 2009 stories and want some more S/U action, take a look! **


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